Carol GoldenEagle - Bone Black

So these wandering and ostracized young men found each other in the bush. They banded up and travelled together, raiding what they could from nearby camps when the night would fall. They would capture women, taking them hostage and using them as sex slaves. That’s how the story is always told.

On a clear summer’s night, one young woman managed to escape, hiding amongst reeds at the edge of the lake where the Young Dogs had set up camp. It’s at this time that Creator sent a fire from heaven. Thunder and the most violent lightning storm touched the ground with vengeance, burning up each of the Young Dogs and the tents they had been sleeping in, leaving only dark patches of burned-up grass in their places. The lightning struck only in one part of the valley that night and disappeared as quickly as it arrived. The young woman hiding in the reeds was spared—the only one left alive. When all was quiet, she ran back to the safety of her family and the encampment a few miles away. This story has been handed down since the middle of the nineteenth century, a time before the white man settled in the valley.

Creator has rid the world of filth and danger many times , Wren tells herself. She checks her reflection in the mirror. She makes no attempt to wipe away the tear that rolls, ever so slowly, down her right cheek as she thinks of Raven. Later this morning, Billy will be arriving as planned to check out the roof, or so he thinks.

It’s almost eleven, the scheduled time for Billy’s appointment at the farmhouse. Wren looks out the kitchen window toward the grid road to see if his roofing vehicle might be coming down the long and winding driveway. It is.

During these passing moments, Wren remembers her prayer to Kohkum last night asking for advice about her coming plans. She didn’t dream of a scarecrow but was instead awakened during the early-morning hours by the sounds of something rustling outside. When she glanced out the window, Wren saw a deer. It was a white-tailed buck with a magnificent set of horns digging under the snowfall and looking for nourishment.

Wren needs nourishment, too. For her soul. She’s been reading the Bible over these last weeks looking for answers. An eye for an eye and all that. The Ten Commandments. She knows the Bible condemns killing but in her mind, Wren doesn’t see this as killing. It’s more like silencing a bad noise, like the Red Sea when it swallowed up a whole army, like fire from the heavens that burned a village of Young Dog ne’er-do-wells who only caused pain and suffering. Evil must be destroyed.

But the time for pondering has come to an end. Billy Vespas has abused women—her, Stella and who knows how many others since she last saw him. How much harm and evil has he inflicted upon this world? Wren wonders as she hears a truck driving up and then its door slam shut.

She checks the mirror again. This time she sees not her own reflection, but the eyes of a mother bear.

Wren has always wondered about magic and other worlds. As a child, she saw specks of light along the landscape when she’d wake up during the night to get a glass of water. Kohkum always told her, “They are fireflies,” but to little Wren, those lights belonged to fairies. Maybe even to Little People reminding her that they would always stay close, protecting her from harm.

The forecast says there is mild weather for the rest of the week but Wren wants it to snow. She wants to see those large flakes fall and cover her tracks. Cover her plan. Her Red Sea parting. Wren has asked the fairies for help today. She’s asked them before and they always come through. Let it snow . As Wren hears Billy knock on the door, tiny snowflakes begin to fall from the sky.

“So glad you could make it,” she says while hiding three small blue pills in her cardigan sweater pocket, “Come on in. Coffee is on.”

The thing about Zopiclone is that it can leave an aftertaste, so Wren talks about her apiary and how the bees this year seem to have been attracted to alfalfa instead of other types of wildflowers.

“Because of all that, the honey in your latte will have a distinct flavour.”

Wren doesn’t use the regular coffee maker, but instead uses the espresso machine, one of the only things that Lord brought into the farmhouse from his previous home. He likes that the machine can produce a froth of milk stacked as high as meringue on a pie.

“It’s good,” Billy says. “I didn’t know you were a beekeeper. That’s cool.”

Wren makes small talk with Billy for the next half an hour, waiting for the sleeping pill to take hold and for her plan to take flight. She glances out the window at the falling snow: fresh, white and falling steadily. Wren understands it as a sign that she’s on the right path, that what she’s about to do will be muted and covered. Like it never happened.

“So, I noticed your shingles,” Billy says, his speech beginning to slur a bit. “They look in good shape to me, but there’s no harm in being sure.” He sets down a brochure that outlines quotes for various roofing projects.

“Muffin?” asks Wren, extending a freshly baked plate of baking laced with more Zopiclone. “I have butter if you want. Here.”

Billy eagerly takes one of the drug-laced muffins. There’s no more need for small talk. He hurriedly eats the baked treat and passes out right at the kitchen island. He falls off his stool to the floor with a thud. Wren slaps him across the face, hard, to make sure he’s no longer conscious, no longer aware of what’s happening. When she’s sure he’s out cold, she ascends the stairs to grab vials of her husband’s insulin.

Wren returns to the kitchen seconds later and fills up a syringe. She removes the boot and sock from Billy’s left foot, not an easy task when someone is a dead weight on the floor, unmoving. She slips the needle between his toes and presses the clear liquid in deep. The excess insulin in his system will stop his heart soon. She gives him a second injection between another pair of toes. “Just to make sure,” she mutters, knowing Billy will be dead soon.

Wren takes a sip of her coffee and heads outside. She gazes peacefully at the rolling pasture, the rustling leaves in the trees, the delicate flakes of snow falling on everything. She will add wood to her outdoor kiln soon. She’ll turn Billy’s bones to ash.

Wren lives in the valley. Her old farmhouse is tucked away between several buttes and far out of sight from the main highway. There are no other homes in any direction for miles. There was no one to witness Billy’s death, just as there was no one to witness Raven’s disappearance. Wren generously feeds the kiln with the birch a neighbour down the road supplied earlier in the year. Billy’s body is heavier than Wren ever imagined and she has a hell of time dragging his corpse outside from her kitchen floor. Wren decides she will use the ashes from Billy’s burned bones to make a vessel for kitchen utensils, like potato mashers or spaghetti spacers.

“For once, you will provide something useful,” she utters to the skin and bones. Wren’s disassociates herself, imagining she’s dragging nothing more than a heavy load of dirty laundry stuffed into a duffel bag. She removes the cowboy boot from his other foot to hang on her fence. She decides to paint the boot a hue of fluorescent pink before displaying it. Or maybe rainbow colours , she thinks and laughs. But what about the roofing vehicle? The lake is frozen. Not thick but frozen.

“Only an idiot would drive on that ice at this time of year. Too risky. Too thin yet,” Wren chirps. “Only an idiot, like this roofer from the city, would drive his truck out on the ice. A cidiot .” She laughs at her own joke while stoking the outdoor kiln. She’ll feed the body in first then set it aflame.