DANILO JOHN THOMAS / SHED BONES
Undersnow
The winter is hard and white and the snow falls at angles askew and sticks over frozen leaves that fill the ponds and slick the sticks until the water freezes solid enough to catch the snow and for the snow to pile on top of what was once a pond filled with leaves and sticks, and the occasional frog, now buried deep in the warm mud sleeping and dreaming swarms that block out the sun. The elk marches through the white unseen, that single spire jutting from a crown of bone. His eyes are knots in pine where an owl winters and sits and turns his head upside when the hooves bust through the ice and crack apart the pond and the leaves stick to the fur and freeze there. The elk stops and shakes his feet like a cat and the leaves fall off frozen in the air on top of the snow, tracks flung in the forest, and where the elk walks his tracks are brown leaves on black ponds. The winter deepens and the elk roots his nose near the bottoms of trees to dig through the scraggle for any green shoot buried there, eating pine needles if it must and bedding in the thickets. A late squirrel nests in his horn to be shaken out in the morning and the squirrel freezes to death and the wolves sniff at the body and follow black ponds. The elk knows they are there, knows they will not approach until it weakens, it could be days, and by then maybe the snow will have stopped and by then maybe the elk will have moved down the mountain out into wet cold valleys that still have some life in them. The snow falls on back and antler—the distance and knowledge of wolves in the world. Mountain goats huddle on a knoll for their own reasons. In a crag the last embers of the traveler’s fire smolders in the falling snow and the knife-thrower broods and throws his knife into the side of his cart and gets up and retrieves it and hunkers down and throws it again and retrieves it and hunkers down and throws it again and does all of this all to stay warm, to keep the snow from piling on top of him. The swing of his arms dropping the snow from his shoulder. The turned hip and the friction of his motion keeps him warm and his aim accurate and the mountain lion watches him and the traveler knows he is there and stares and points his long, crooked finger at the lion in warning and stares. The lion slinks to kill goats and passes the elk and sharpens its claws on that mighty antler that is life and is death. The elk rolls in the ashes of the traveler's fire and stains his coat and the traveler hunkers and throws his knife and takes the reigns up in his cart and hitches them carefully to the neck of the elk. They jangle down the mountain to somewhere warmer, past the wolves moving in the thickets and the traveler throws his knife into the horn of the elk from his perch on the wagon and laughs. The elk cannot shake the knife free and forgets it. It is too brisk a day for bloodshed. Frogs burst from the ground like hook and cotyledon to fill the pond with seed. The goats bleat.
Trade Skill
The elk cannot kill the traveler, does not try to find him in the night where bells ring off stones above the fire pit, the lamb skewered and dripping fat on to the bed of coals and hissing that delicious spit to the ground coagulating in little beads. Soap in the sand. Pearls in the sand and the dogs slunker up and hurp it down. Against each other, the other nips, and the fights and the traveler watches and laughs as he dances. He buries his knife to the hilt in the spine of the closest cur and the rest go yipping and slavering off into shadow where their one eye crests the ridge at midnight, a frozen howl above the earth and the traveler takes his meat and rips it off in chunks and waxes it through his beard and hair and lays in his cart afraid only for the lives of those around him. Those that the elk will skewer on its horrible brow and wear them, a coronet of bone and muscle, a skeleton that screams and flails impaled, and stuck, thrown to the ground and getting dead. The elk tramples and maims because it has to and she nears the traveler and he eats his meat and they stand around the fire until the dawn, that beating heart, one beat a day, one ra-ump at night and the world beats on and the elk charges and sinks that branched tangential from one point through to another. The traveler howls and the wolves watch that anger dance in the trees and the elk backs slowly away and leaves the traveler panting in the dirt to draw his knife and slit the animal's throat. The elk comes apart. The head folds back into dandelion pistil and threads away into bindings of thin green stalk. The skeleton branches falling into a bundle and the ember of her heart catches fire and the traveler sits around it and warms his hands in the morning’s cold, his breath mingling with the smoke. He kindles with air and exhale and eats his breakfast and burns the dog of night away to nothing. Its teeth molder and flash, crack apart when he pisses on the fire to put it out. Down the mountain he trundles with his cart to the city and where the road turns from rock to grass he stops and looks at the mountain and counts: one bow of yew; one horn-handled buck knife; one horn-handled dagger; one horn-handled miter goblet; one horn-handled horn; one skull inlaid with silver; thirteen elk teeth bound in silver wire welded and hanging from strips of hide; two hatchets from scapula honed and inlaid with steel; two hammers from hip bones; six vertebrate intertwined in ribs for babies' rattles. He picks up the sticks on his cart and drags it forward under the walls of the city, which is no wall but asphalt and concrete. A wall where worlds stop. He crosses over. The cart easily dragged, there is glass in the air, steel holding the glass in air, stone the buildings, the houses a wall, and he moves through to the market and rings the silver bell and says nothing. They come and peek and steal glances and test the balance of the blades. The traveler takes the drape away from the bull's eye painted in blood on his cart. He lets them let fly and the blades sink and quiver into the cart and are happily bought by strange bald men, thin in the arm and wicked in the eye, no one needs a knife anymore, not behind this wall, not for useful purposes, but the rattles are taken and the hammers and hatchets taken and fastened to walls. Savage décor. The potential energy to stop a man and save a life bolted fast to studs in walls when intruders pick locks and stab with a knife, bone-handled and gleaming. They buy it all and the traveler buys an ass and he buys another lamb and he drives them out of the city back to the fire pit where the dogs have dug holes in the sand gone after the fat. The elk always finds him.
The Vast Gossamer
There is room to walk in the forest and the pines shed red needles down to the floor and the floor fills with soft-sharp in the wet mornings and the mornings here are dewy. The moss grows not just to the north but as fur-thick green and soft-fur caterpillars crawling in the fuzz the double fuzz they never go hungry though the trees age and thicken their rings accumulating and tightening layer on layer. As the inner circles turn to stone, the mossy and vascular bark pumps out of the ground sweet water. The insides are still stone and the moss climbs and clings to branches draped to the floor in webs and spiders make their webs from web to web and the red needles fall and the stone inside rots in the wetness and the oldest trees break and fall down onto their needles in the dirt and time moves and time moves slowly and the moss creeps and the caterpillars creep into the broken stump and the rain continues to fall and fill a pond in the stump filled with sweet water. A toad jumps away from the snake with broad head and diamonds, yellow jewels, a crown, the snake a king of this stump but hungry and searching her tongue flicking and she feels her coming, moving through the webs and the boughs bending away from the highest head and the elk dips and drinks, parts its soft lips and sucks from the stump moss and water and the snake slithers off back through the red soft needles. And this could be a happy time. This could be calming. A mist and the quiet and the softness of water and moss and dirt and the thick white fur of the elk. Through the mossy bark between the trees stalks the traveler, stalks the wolf and the lion. The traveler, his arrow cleft nocked around catgut, the bow drawn, the elk standing broad and the traveler hidden. His face in paint his clothes doused in elk urine his arm taut and ready to loose. The wolf who pads on red soft needles skulks unheard and smells of wolf which is the scent of silence. His company converges and death comes. The lion, golden in the trees licks her white mouth and her golden eyes do not mask their intention. Agates in a stump, her brain hopping, a toad jumps and the lion crouches. Springs. The pack moves and the arrow is let fly and they converge. And this could be calm. This could be quiet, the mist of blood, the silence in the hunt and the tang of adrenaline. The fur in blood. Still. Soft. Still. The wolves fight the wolves fight the lion and the arrow bites into heart and spine and the traveler fades back between the trees, his kill maimed. A snarling whirl of golden fur and grey wolf and white elk that mighty horn rattling from the center of the fray no moan from the elk. The arrow’s quick work. The traveler retreats on top of red soft needles between webs of moss hanging down to the ground and room to walk between these trees and the lion drags off what she can and the wolves nip and chatter and tear. Redder softer needles. The moss cradles the skull and the spine. Tongue torn out, eyes roll and the roots lift and the red soft needles bleach and drape from the bones, from horn and skull, and push up from the loam until stands again the elk and the snake king slithers up a foreleg and coils into the heart. And this could be the calm. This quiet. The space between trees. The red soft needles the white fur of the elk. This feeding. This death and this time, this time recounting and reserving the feeding, keeping the killers. And this could be happy: the elk eternally living, again, and broken, again, and living, again, but this beast is the space between trees and it is magic and there are seeds and these seeds are planted in fur and moss and red soft needles tread on by pad and hoof and traveler.
Requiem
A wagon in the fog and the orange radials shine from torches holstered a radiance; candles lighting in lamps muffled in the night. The tinder clinks and wails. The leather straps of their oxen’s yoke creak in the damp and strain and the torches jigger in their slats. The beads in the hair of the traveler sway. His traveler wife bites down into the brick of tobacco, her morning’s bread given then, she chaws and spacks out red juice on an earth going slowly beneath her. The saliva rolls up under the wheel and sticks and flecks and falls away, back to the ground in a hole the wheel dips a crack in the radial. Her earrings sway and chime against her tattooed neck, a skull in a crystal ball, smoke and a snake and a knife there intertwined. The future. The past. All death, all misery and the back of the wagon moans the shifting weight, and their cargo jostled by the movement of down the road, down the road. No maintenance in the misted eerie of the world where neither wagon nor cart has ever passed too idly. Paths. Something broken anew here. The frying pans clang together as the wagon shifts and underneath that ringing the crunch and shift of dust between hoof and floorboard. The swish of the tail and the buzzing of once feeding flies swarm the traveler and the traveler's wife and she turns and spits back at the elkicorn babe there in shackles. There where the foal stands drugged and staggering and small in the miasmic light. Away from grass, on the dirt on the floorboards this brilliance sleeps again and the wagon presses on into the night. Out of the darkness a circle of fire and stone. The traveling camp, there with their cutlasses gleaming in the fire, the steel blades curved red and smiling. Honing stones grind down their lengths and the traveler, the Wagoner king and head traveler, pulls the canvas from his wagon to show his prize. They gather and the music starts, sticks on skin drums and flutes of reed and trumpets and tambourines in the dark flare and the travelers twirl. Their boots lift off the ground. They arch their backs and the steel toes of their boots beat the ground and fly again, a drunkard's eyes flitting. Their sashes loosened. Their jumping higher. The music louder and quicker and the knives come loose to raise their hallowed foe. A hilt in the side of the wagon and the next comes. A duo, the trio, the quartet of quiver croaks oaken frog chirrup and raises the chorus of amphibian and insect from the mired bogs to join the howling knives and the night set to shuttering and the fire wavers in the sound and the dawn comes. The bottles have been passed and spent and the elkicorn babe is forgotten until it all comes down to slaughter. He bugles, and on the road the bearded neck, the white main, and that single bifurcated antler reaches out over a proud snout and angry eyes that flash in the dawn they once sired. He comes raging and the dance and the struggle are the same: jumping, the music, the howling. But the eyes no longer see and the swords no longer smile, their wielders impaled and shaken and shattered limp. Slowly cowed into the circle of stone, the travelers retreat. The head traveler shrouds them in flame and they wail and his skin bubbles and burns. His wife cackles. She holds the stone and a red bird and they fly off in clutched claw. The babe bawls and is set free of her chains and starving eats grass stained in traveler blood. The vigilant sentinel stands over the stones. That antler that is life, that is death.
Horse
The first to wonder about the traveler tucked away in his stones with his scar and his fire was the elk with a single horn. It remembered the young man with his young family. They had peered into the waters. The family was gone. The traveler crazed and rangy. The elk with a single horn went to speak with the traveler. The traveler laid traps for those coming to the rock. He hid on a boulder and when the rakes came down, and the rocks followed after, and the single horn of the elk broke under the weight of those powerful tines into dust and so to the ribs and the spine buried, the fur matted in blood. It was many years the elk with its single horn was loam, but in time the elk with the single horn grew over the rocks as a furry white moss and sprang forth as a tree and the bark was white and the bark frayed fine and hung down like hair and the trunk was as wide and as long as a horse and a single branch was its head and the elk with the single horn stepped out of the rocks and lowered that branch. Finding the traveler in his stones, tending his fires, the elk with the single horn and vengeance in its heart spilled the blood of that ancient and lingering traveler.
One drop of blood and life forever. One drop infinite renewal. The elk with the single horn, reborn, always, after the touch of death, becomes a growing, becomes the seed of itself reframing out from the ground: snow if on snow, leaf if on leaf, and always dirt, the intertwining of bone and sinew and breath into legend: elkicorn. One drop for immortality but only one life lasts forever. The first to wonder, the wind took the traveler in dreams to the forest where the elk with the single horn crossed the lake from where the traveler’s family withered like coals smeared out in the palm. The traveler wails, pleads with the holy beast for something to save his mother, his daughter, his wife and his brother from hollow bellies. From swallowed stones and willow bones. The traveler begs for one drop of life everlasting coursing through the veins of the elk with its single horn.
The traveler’s family dies. The elk and its horn walk and the traveler curses its beauty and curses its jest in the face of the living doomed. In time, the elk with the single horn falls by the traveler’s hand in a trap among stones. The traveler swallows royal heart, swallows blood, but in the traveler’s veins pumps poison. One drop. One single drop of the traveler’s blood is death and a curse and the earth will not bear it, and so the traveler is forever.
Impaled on the single horn of the elk the traveler strikes out with his bone-handled knife and together their blood mingles and falls. The earth spits back the black horse from the blood of immortals and this horse runs through the night. Conceived from renewal and what may not fruit, the horse will never stop running. The horse brings the dawn. The horse’s ribs are the horizon. The horse’s flanks, the fading colors of flame on the western slopes of the mountain where the elk with the single horn takes root and the traveler stokes his fire and cackles at his child running so far and so fast.
Danilo John Thomas is the author of the chapbooks The Hand Implements (The Cupboard Pamphlet) and Murk (AB Gorham). His writing has won the New Delta Review Gibbs Prize in flash fiction. He has been a finalist for the IHLR Book Prize and the Autumn House Rising Writers Award. His work appears in The Fourth River, The Rupture, Fugue Online, Juked, Midwestern Gothic, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. He is the managing and prose editor at Baobab Press, and assistant managing editor of The Kenyon Review. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, two daughters, and good dogs, Pirl and Bel.