On Sundays, She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield

Author:Yah Yah Scholfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oni House Press Corp
Published: 2021-06-10T00:23:11+00:00

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Back inside the cottage, the bear shed its skin. Jude stood flush to the wall and watched as it rose to its full height of eight feet, head brushing the high ceiling. Its shadow was long as it swayed slowly as if dancing. The coarse black fur fell away, the animal hide changing into a river of coiled black hair tangled with twigs and leaves. Its mangled face softened, snarling maw transformed into human lips and nose and cheeks and chin. The eyes, Jude noticed, remained the same.

Of all the improbable things presented to Jude, the transformation was the most impossible. She held away from Nemoira, mind flashing first to the sagging, blood-stained wood on her porch then to their first true meeting in the woods.

Nemoira frowned down at her. “Are you asked of me, Judy?”

Jude began to shake her head, stopped, then nodded. She was not a child, but she felt childlike in Nemoira’s presence, this stranger, stranger than she ever thought. Who was this woman in her parlor? What did she know of her, really? She thought about what Nemoira said to her a while back, about how she could be the danger all along, and Jude chided herself for not believing her then. Still, Jude was in awe. Was it possible that the same beast that plagued her all these years was the same woman she read to, sang to? The woman she loved?

“Is there anything else?”

Nemoira narrowed her eyes. “Anything else?”

“Any more secrets?” asked Jude, lifting her head to meet Nemoira’s gaze.

“No. No more secrets.”

“Do you promise?”

Nemoira lowered her gaze, quiet for a moment, then said, “I promise, no more secrets.”

Jude didn’t realize how tense she was, how raised her shoulders were, and how clenched her jaw was until Nemoira came to her and hugged her. She tightened up; her heart pounded. Jude kept her arms loose to her side as Nemoira held her, unable to shake the image of the bear prowling the woods, its roars following her into her dreams.

There was a wild animal in her house. A grizzly bear more gruesome and grislier than most with terrible claws and teeth that maimed and mauled. She’d seen bears before, but they were all brown and black bears, relatively harmless to the grizzly that held her. Some small part of her knew she was heading into dangerous territory with Nemoira, but she didn’t care. She gave Nemoira a part of herself by telling her about Ma’am, and now Nemoira had done the same. Nemoira squeezed Jude to her, and Jude squeezed her back, her senses alight.

What good would it do to kick Nemoira out anyway? A fed animal always returned.

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