The Mare

At one time, in one place, there was a woodcutter who lived on the edge of a small village. It laid in the flatlands surrounding the great southern mountains, the soft meadowy gums—dotted with groves—from which those ancient fangs protruded. The woodcutter’s small ancestral home was built at the edge of such a grove, far from the small homesteads and thatched-roof cottages that comprised the rest of the village.

The woodcutter lived alone. His only living family was a sister married off to a woodcutter who lived in a village closer to the capital. All of the others were taken by a plague that had ravaged the region two years prior. He had no wife, no children to take up his already limited space, only a small white she-cat that came and went as she pleased and kept the place free of vermin. His own name, Bratumił, was uttered so infrequently at times he forgot it.

By and large the villagers thought him mute, but the reality was that the woodcutter did not have much to say. He exhausted his thoughts as he worked, felling trees in the grove and splitting their corpses so that they stopped resembling trees and started resembling fuel. The villagers relied on him, so his strangeness was tolerated. He was not a menacing man: big but not overly tall, with small, dark eyes and a bushy brown beard. Village maidens gossiped when they caught glimpses of his scarred hands. Bratumił was an ogre without the ugliness, all the mystery of a monster without the transgression. They teased each other over the prospect of marriage to mute Bratumił, harboring inside them both pity and burning curiosity in ratios unique to each woman.

Even so, he remained alone in his little house at the edge of the grove. Bratumił got a fair amount of affection from the little white cat when she decided to give it to him. Despite the time she spent outside, she was never dirty. Her fur gleamed like fresh snowfall and the pads of her paws were soft and pink. He wondered if she traveled from house to house, fooling every villager into feeding her for a few days. 

Despite the monotony of his life, or perhaps because of it, the woodcutter was content. He was afraid to change anything, as if leaning this way or that while tied to Fortune’s wheel might send it flying. One frigid winter evening, Fortune’s own hand intervened.

Bratumił lay on a bed made of straw, topped with woolen blankets and quilts sewn by family members he had lost. He was grateful for them, and one of the great joys of his life was knowing there was a warm and reasonably comfortable bed waiting for him after a long day outside among the barren trees, his ax resting beside the door.

That night he passed between wakefulness and sleep without his knowledge and dreamt he was lying in his bed. He felt a crushing weight on his chest, pushing his ribs into his lungs. He made to breathe, but could not. The air was trapped in his windpipe, denied entrance into his lungs and the rest of his body. His eyes opened wide. They traveled from the ceiling to the foot of his bed.

There, standing motionless, was a pure white woman, undressed completely and so thin her bones seemed ready to tear her skin. Bratumił made to look away, for modesty’s sake if not out of utter terror, but found himself transfixed. He was unable to move, even to blink. He was a corpse reclining on its bier, full of air and stagnant blood. The woman’s eyes were yellow with no whites, bisected by a pupil that more closely resembled a sutured wound. Her hair was the only part of her that was not wild. It was plaited and tied high on her head, flowers of incomprehensible color and shape woven into the design. One moment, they were pinkish gray, the color of the brains of a man the woodcutter once saw trampled by a horse in the village. The next, the flowers were murky blue, like the water of the river Bratumił’s mother told him contained a great fish-man so he would not approach it as a child. On and on their colors shifted, cycling through the fires of Hell and green-yellow bile. On and on for hours, though the light did not change.

In the mutating colors, Bratumił found evidence of truths too alien for him to comprehend. He brushed against hulking shapes, trying to comprehend their forms only by touch. Every attempt to make sense of the little he retained in the mornings after these dreams was entirely fruitless, not to mention frustrating. After the first night, they became a regular occurrence. They always provoked the same feelings, always the same impossible vision.

Bratumił was initially shaken, but it took about two weeks for him to view this state of affairs as an issue. The dreams were terrifying and painful, but more than that he was now afraid to sleep. He suffered quietly, avoiding trips into the village and remaining as silent as possible among others. He felt the loss of his family—particularly his mother—more keenly than he had since their deaths, all so close together. Mother would know what to do, he thought over and over again. Bratumił imagined that she would close all the windows and burn herbs around his bed. She did this to chase away elves, who hated the smell of the herbs, and while he was not sure if it worked, something about the ritual made him feel better. He thought of sending a message to his sister but thought better of it. She had a husband, and maybe some children by now, and her duty was to them, not her pariah brother. His only consistent source of companionship was the cat, who now slept exclusively at the foot of his bed. Bratumił found her curled there the morning after his first nightmare. At first, he thought she must have known somehow that he was suffering and was trying to comfort him, but he reasoned with himself and realized that it was probably his body heat she was after. Still, he was grateful to see her every morning.

After two months of this, the woodcutter couldn’t take it anymore. He caught his reflection in a stream one afternoon and found his skin sallow and puffy. He was constantly afraid of two things: his lack of sleep and sleeping itself. His terror when he did sleep was now coupled with rage, directed mostly at his guide, the strange naked girl whose eyes never left him. All of her features were violent. Bratumił resented how terrifying she was, how powerful she was. He decided to speak to someone about it, knowing immediately that his only option was to speak to a priest. None of the other villagers could begin to understand; they would think him mad, or possessed. The priest might still think him mad or possessed, but if a priest told him that, he might believe it.

Bratumił made his way into town early the next day, dragging his boots down the dry dirt path. The woodcutter prayed the paths would be empty, and he found that his prayers were answered. A woman carried buckets of water from a well in the center of the village. Her watery eyes brushed over him but did not linger. He found this comforting—he was sallow, but not sallow enough to stare at.

The old stone church sat atop a small hill. Bratumił felt guilty the moment he saw it. He had been absent until he needed help. The thought was almost enough to make him turn back, but his next thought was of his nightmare’s split eyes, and he climbed to the apex of the hill.

He opened the heavy black door and was greeted with the familiar scent of incense. A few penitents kneeled on the floor by the bye-altar. Their murmurings and the small fluttering of candle flames were the only sounds in the building. The priest, an old man the woodcutter never remembered having hair, squinted at him. Bratumił disliked the look he gave him as he made the sign of the cross upon entering.

“Welcome, my child,” he said hoarsely, “Please, come closer so I might see you.”

He relaxed, recognizing that the priest’s squinting was a result of poor eyesight, and stepped forward. He tried to keep his footfalls light so as not to disturb the others. As he stood before the priest, Bratumił watched his eyes grow in recognition and then soften in pity. It was the look he gave him when he last visited the woodcutter’s home, giving his mother her final rites.

He bowed his head, “Father, forgive me for my absence.”

The priest took a brief, narrow glance at the other parishioners, then said quietly, “I am not the one to whom amends must be made. I hesitate to imply this, but you look ill.”

“I am…” Bratumił sighed. Out with it, “I am not well, but I am not ill. I have not been sleeping.”

The priest raised a sparse eyebrow, the creases on his forehead deepening.

He explained, “At night, there’s a woman…I think it’s a demon.”

There was no change in the priest’s expression, which Bratumił was not sure how to take. “Describe it.”

The woodcutter obeyed with some difficulty. He should have considered what he was going to say about the demon before he came to this place. There was a fine line to straddle; he needed to be graphic enough that the priest would understand the nature of the demon but he also felt the need to downplay her vile appearance. Bratumił could not bring himself to describe all of the colors woven into her hair and he left her nakedness out entirely. No one needed to know that.

The priest blinked at him, wide-eyed, then shook his head. “Not to worry, my son. It’s likely just a mare. Quite easily dispelled, as far as demons go.”

He produced a rosary made of simple, wooden beads, and pressed it into Bratumił’s hands. Wood for the woodcutter, he mused, clutching it in his hand.

“I know your family must have many, but take this one as a token from me. Know that I will drive out the source of these night terrors. First of all, you must come to Mass. Your absence has been noticed. Secondly, and this is very important, when you sleep, place the beads under your pillow. It’s a simple remedy, but a sure one.” The old man’s wrinkled face split into a smile, “And don’t forget to pray before you go.”

Bratumił thanked him, bowing his head low. The priest blessed him and the woodcutter made his way to the bye-alter to perform his prayers. The smoky room and repetitive mutterings lulled him, and he feared briefly that he would fall asleep right in that room. 

The village outside the church seemed extremely bright. Bratumił wondered if it was natural or if the direction had literally brightened his outlook. He walked down the hill, fingering the smooth wooden beads as he went.

“Excuse me!” 

The voice erupted from behind him. Startled, he turned around sharply and took two stumbling steps away. The woodcutter felt foolish when he found that the source of the voice was merely a woman, small and rosy-cheeked, standing straight-backed on the path.

“Good day,” he muttered, bowing his head, embarrassed and a bit incensed.

“Good day.” She curtsied, her lips stretched in a smirk, “You’ve been missing.”

“I have,” Bratumił acknowledged.

Her smirk disappeared, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Slowly, she reintroduced herself, “I am Salomea. My father is Mirosław, from the farm by the stream.”

He remembered. So this was the daughter of grim-faced Mirosław, who had been a friend of his father’s before he died. Bratumił didn’t see his face in Salomea’s, but then what he remembered most about Mirosław was his thick gray beard. He could have very easily hidden the same thin lips and tapered chin underneath it.

He nodded, “I remember you. I am Bratumił, the—“

“The woodcutter, yes.” She brushed her yellow hair back under her headscarf and did not seem to notice him bunching his lips in distaste at her interruption. Salomea continued, “My father is still recovering from his sickness, and my little brother is often too busy with the flocks, so we find ourselves in need of firewood.”

“And so you come to me,” he said quietly.

“And so I come to you.” She smiled, “We can pay you however you like. We still have plenty left over from the harvest, even some meat, but that would cost you a bit more wood.”

“I have more than enough to spare.”

“What have you been eating lately?” 

Not enough, he thought, but then answered more delicately, “Turnips, mostly.”

“And it isn’t even Lent yet.” She nodded mock-approvingly, “Your piety is humbling, Bratumił.”

He laughed bitterly, shaking a little.

“Because of my brother, my sisters and I bake a lot of meat pies. It wouldn’t be much more to prepare some for you, as well.” He got the sense she had prepared this speech beforehand.

“Wouldn’t they get cold?” he asked.

Salomea tilted her head incredulously. The look made him feel stupid. He did not like it. She laughed, “We can bring you a bunch of them pre-made, and then all you’ll have to do is bake them.”

“Oh.” Bratumił considered it. His last good meal was consumed before the appearance of the mare and his subsequent sleep deprivation. Even that meal was simply satisfactory, nothing like the things his mother used to make for him. He tried to imitate her recipes from memory, but he was always missing something. A properly prepared pie sounded like paradise to him. So, he agreed.

Salomea grinned, victorious. Through the guise of negotiation, she insisted that the wood be delivered tomorrow. He was to be paid with the first installment of pies. Bratumił agreed meekly, disgusted at himself, then excused himself.

His initial impression of Salomea was somewhere between begrudging admiration and embarrassing resentment. She was just a girl. Yet, that was the problem. She was just a girl.

The woodcutter rushed home, settling into bed with alacrity. Bratumił slid the rosary underneath his pillow. He waited, taking a long, deep breath, and then closed his eyes and took his first shaky step over the threshold.

He found himself on the edge of a river, not large but not small either, standing in a crowd of men who looked suspiciously like him. My forefathers and their forefathers, he recognized. He knew it as surely as he knew who he was. Bratumił made up the end of a procession that ballooned out around the raised bank in a semicircle. With uncanny purpose, he maneuvered his way through the generations toward the center.

There in the midst of them all stood a woman, small and stooped, dressed in incongruous rags and covered in mud. She was soggy, as if she had been pulled from the river. Just by looking at her, he knew this was not true, that, actually, the opposite must be done. His grandfathers burned bushels of herbs in the space between Bratumił and the woman; his uncles ripped at her dingy skirts. She did not flinch, only swayed with the force of it all. The men laid their hands on him one at a time, and he knew what he was expected to do. He felt their calluses on his skin through the layers of his clothes and saw their breath lingering in plumes of steam. He knew what he was expected to do.

As the last hand fell from him, he stepped into the space between the woman and the men. He stood behind her, regarding the river, feeling the frigid water as if he had been submerged. As his eyes shifted to her, he found her staring at him with dull eyes the same gray-blue as the river. It was Salomea.

He woke with a start to find himself alone, his hand under the pillow clutching the wooden rosary. The light had barely changed. Bratumił stared blankly at his ceiling, having forgotten most of the specifics of his dream. He retained the immense pressure of purpose and the look on Salomea’s face, full of a banal and practiced disdain. It was highly unnerving, but not in the way the mare’s visions were. No, this was a natural nightmare; its shape was familiar and even slightly soothing. He sighed, relieved, and nestled back into bed, falling into a light and mercifully dreamless sleep.

The next day, the day before the mass, Bratumił gathered a good deal of wood and carried it to Mirosław’s farm on his back. A yellow-haired girl–Salomea’s sister, he assumed–guided him to the woodshed. He unloaded the wood and stacked it carefully.

A voice sounded, “Good day, Bratumił.”

He started, then sighed, and turned to face Salomea. Bratumił found her eyes as dull as they were in his dream. He nodded, mumbling a greeting.

“You’re very easily startled, aren’t you?” She chuckled.

He narrowed his eyes; she did not flinch. In lieu of answering, he placed the last bundle in its spot. He dusted off his thighs, sighing.

Salomea came to observe his work. She nodded, gnawing on her lower lip.

“Enough?” he asked gruffly.

She nodded, “Yes, thank you. We have your payment ready. Come and sit inside; I will fetch it from the larder.”

Keen on collecting his pies, he followed her into the farmhouse’s kitchen and sat at the table where Salomea indicated. Bratumił heard people moving elsewhere in the house, a bout of children’s laughter coming from up the stairs. He could almost feel the lingering warmth of Salomea’s family. A wave of nostalgia threatened to drag him under. His shoulders drooped. 

She returned with a covered basket. Salomea frowned, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired,” he said, “Very tired.”

She stared at him, uselessly. Bratumił wished she’d look elsewhere. She set the basket on the table before him. Smiling unconvincingly, she said, “Hopefully these will help.”

He smiled back, lips dry, then bid her farewell, carrying the basket away. Like a child given a sweet, he was a bit giddy, nearly tripping over his feet when he laid eyes upon his house.

His stomach audibly churning, Bratumił baked the first pie he fished out of the basket, stowing the others in his nearly empty larder. He stared into the fire, heedless to the pain it caused his eyes. His hunger and excitement blended into a severe sense of looming dread. He could sleep without issue and had a basket of hand pies at his disposal; his situation had improved markedly, and yet he felt he was standing at the edge of a great precipice, the smallest movements of his feet casting crumbs of rock into the abyss. 

This feeling faded when he pulled the pie from the fire. It smelled better than anything he had ever made. Ignoring the plumes of steam rising from the dough, he took a hasty bite. His mouth filled with the pie’s scalding insides, bland but delicious and well-salted. He devoured almost half the pie before stopping to notice his burnt tongue. This was the best trade he had made in a long time, and he was suddenly quite fond of Salomea. She clearly knew what she was doing with meat and dough. He found her strange, but perhaps he was just unused to her. Perhaps he had been isolated too long. Bratumił began to wonder if it was time for him to get married. Salomea seemed like a decent choice: the daughter of a neighbor, clever and obviously good in the kitchen. 

As he mused, he took another bite. Working through the pie with his teeth, he noticed something strange in the filling. He fished around inside his mouth and pulled out a long, white hair. After a twinge of disgust, he relaxed and tossed it aside. Women shed; so did cats, though he hadn’t seen his cat since the morning he saw the priest.

Having finished his pie, Bratumił spent the rest of the afternoon lazily cleaning his house, as though he were expecting any visitors. He imagined a yellow-haired wife shadowing him as he worked, tailed by a toddler of indeterminate gender. The fantasy made him pleasantly tired and he sank like a rock into his mattress as the sun set.

Blinking sleep from his eyes in his best clothes, Bratumił dragged himself to Mass with the rest of the town. He took a seat in the back of the church. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The church stank of incense, and underneath that, damp. His eyes flicked open at a loud cough. It was Miroslaw and his children. The four of them–Salomea, her brother, and her two younger sisters–followed him like ducklings. He laughed gently, remembering how disorderly he and his siblings had been. His heart sank, and in that exact moment, Salomea’s eye flicked to meet his. She smiled at him. He looked away, embarrassed.

Salomea and her family sat in front of him. She looked over her shoulder discreetly. He could almost hear her saying, I know you’re watching me. 

Song erupted through the church. The old priest entered, walking solemnly to the altar and bowing low. Those gathered stood, a meadow of flesh and fabric. As the service began, Bratumił watched his neighbors, his joints stiff and eyelids heavy.

The familiar cadence of the priest’s voice and the sweet blend of mildew and perfume blended together to remind Bratumił of the bed he had left. The congregation sat for the reading. He tried to listen, entranced by the sound of the holy words, and closed his eyes for a moment, only a moment.

The next moment he was submerged in freezing water. His head surfaced and he managed a gulp of air that strained his lungs before he was pulled back under by the current. His feet kicked beneath him, finding purchase for brief, agonizing moments until the bottom inevitably shifted. He tired quickly.

Bratumił stared up at the sky, thrashing and wasting his strength. He saw a face peering at him over the high bank. No, there were many faces. His mother, his sisters, every woman he had ever met. At the center, Salomea. Just as he slipped under the water, he watched Salomea’s lips spread in a smile. He felt her eyes lingering on him as he drifted further away, sinking deeper and deeper beyond what he knew was possible in the shallow water. Light dispersed to almost nothing. He could not breathe.

Another burst of song woke Bratumił, plunging him into open air. Everyone was standing again. He rushed to join them, blinking rapidly and putting it out of his mind. He stared at the back of Salomea’s head, shivering.

At the first socially acceptable moment, having made sure the priest saw he was in attendance, Bratumił left for home. Keeping the river water out of his mind was a challenge. Keeping the peering, pale womenfaces out of his mind was impossible. He refused to acknowledge either of these things. He had done what he had set out to do, and he was going to spend the rest of the sabbath in a similarly peaceful and godly fashion. Even if he felt he had been treading water since he woke in the church.

He walked in the grove, treading. The sound of the wind in the trees recalled the river’s current. He rearranged the scant contents of his larder, treading. He sat at his table and stared blankly ahead, chilled to the bone despite the roaring fire he had built. Why now, when everything was meant to be resolved? When he had hope again? Bratumił buried his face in his hands and wondered if it would ever end, this tumult, from the emaciated arms of the mare, into the water, into the cold-flushed cheeks of Salomea and her foremothers. His foremothers, who would not let him be.

That was it, wasn’t it? From the first nightmare to the latest, that was the unifying factor. Women. Women crushing his ribs, women cooking him meals, women showing him things he did not need to understand. Above all, women watching. Staring. They studied his reactions for sport.

The sun sagged in the west. Darkness crept through the house from its stronghold in the far corners. Bratumił’s eyes rested on the cusp of firelight and shadow. His vision warped and trembled. Scenes played out on the wall: Bratumił, his shadow wife, their chubby toddler, partaking in all manner of betrayal and violence.

Bratumił felt the absence of his mother like a hole in his flesh. He could not fathom his mother being the crushing kind of woman. And she would be able to tell the difference between them. Hand on his shoulder, she would survey her son’s life. She would point them out to him: that one’s worthless, that one has potential, that one’s likely to eat the apple.

The fire dwindled. The day, overlong and fruitless, was over. He stood, stretched, and set about preparing for bed. He moved languidly, as though already asleep. Sitting on his bed, sinking pleasantly into the mattress, he remembered the rosary. He dug through the room, through his pockets. Nowhere. Now, in this moment of terror, he was set to meet the mare again. He panicked, tearing through the contents of his home a second time. Nothing.

A knock at the door broke Bratumił’s frenzy. He took deep, slow breaths, unsure if he had heard correctly. There came another knock; it spurred him into action, unlatching and pulling the door open. Salomea stood before him, her head uncovered, eyes wide.

“Good…good evening,” she said.

“What do you want?” demanded Bratumił.

She extended her hand. The missing rosary laid curled in her palm.

Bratumił snatched it from her and pulled her inside. Her appearance froze the currents of his mind in place. The door slammed shut behind them. Salomea pulled herself from his grip.

Teeth bared, he asked, “Why’d you take this?” 

“I didn’t, Bratumił. You left it at Mass.” She smiled weakly, lamblike.

“And you’re just returning it now?”

“Yes.” She looked around, her eyes shining with apprehension, “Are you alright?”

“No. I’m not,” he admitted. “You just won’t leave me alone, will you?”

“I’m sorry?”

He slammed his hand on the table, the beads pressing into his palm, “You’re trying to suffocate me! All of you wretched women trying to suffocate me!”

“Bratumił—“

“No! You’ve mocked me from the moment you met me!”

“Mocked you?” she scoffed, finally dissuaded from timidity, “I have been nothing but kind to you!”

“Right.” He closed the distance between them. Salomea’s spine straightened against the door, hair standing on end. Her fear gratified him. “Explain yourself! Explain how you come to steal the thing meant to protect me. Explain how when the demon was driven from my mind, I still find you in my nightmares! It’s you, isn’t it? You aren’t Mirosław’s daughter; you’re the thing that drove me mad!”

She said nothing, merely shuddered and took a single breath. Salomea shoved him back, whipping around to undo the latch. Bratumił grabbed her by the wrist and tore her away from the door, flinging her so she stumbled across the room. They stood on opposite sides of the table upon which he imagined her serving his dinner.

Bratumił circled it clockwise. Salomea did the same. He changed directions. So did she. He ran at her and she screamed, sliding under the table and cowering. Her speech was incomprehensible, fast and weighed down with phlegm. Bratumił found he was entirely uninterested. He had no idea what he was doing and he did not care.

Accordingly, he tossed the table aside. Salomea scrambled away, screaming: the auditory equivalent of the mare’s bony fingers. He swooned with rage. He grabbed her wrist and hauled her to her feet. She slapped his hands, stepping forcefully on his toes until his grip loosened enough for her to run towards the door. Bratumił intercepted her, shoving her towards the overturned table. She stumbled, but did not fall. Her eyes lingered on something beside him, but Brautmił took this as cowardice and nothing else. He let out a shaky breath and stepped towards her.

Salomea ducked under him, slipping around him back to the door. Not the door, next to the door, where Bratumił’s ax leaned against the wall. She snatched it up, brandished it. He nearly laughed. She trembled before him, her thin fingers blanching, face glistening with tears. He moved to disarm her.

Salomea shouted, bringing the ax down directly into Bratumił’s sternum. Her fear fueled the blow, driving the blade through his clothes, through his flesh, shattering bone into shrapnel. Bratumił crumpled, falling on his front, burying the blade deeper inside him. Thick, black blood flooded between him and the floor. Salomea stared, horrified, her hands frozen in a facsimile of grip. The only sound shared between them was his pained gurgle. In reply, she blinked, pulled open the door, and ran into the night, leaving it wide open.

Bratumił lay dying in his small ancestral home. The storm of his thoughts dissipated, replaced by fathomless pain and knowledge of his imminent demise. A shape appeared in his view, elegant and small. It approached him, revealing itself to be the little white cat he had not seen in days. She sat at the edge of his pooling blood with her tail tucked around her tiny feet. The last things Bratumił ever perceived were her sclera-less, yellow eyes, bisected by a thin, black slit.

***

K. Thompson (she/they) is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she lives with her cat, who is probably not a demon. Her hobbies include eating Pad Thai and staring forlornly at her unread book pile. She can be reached at kthompson.fiction@gmail.com