Neil Gaiman - Trigger Warning - Short Fictions and Disturbances

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ said the dwarf.

They walked to the east, all four of them, away from the sunset and the lands they knew, and into the night.

Witch Work

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks

She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea

And she kept her life in a box.

The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen

Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.

But every September its fruit stained the green

As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.

The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears

They crept and they chattered, they chimed and they chewed.

She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.

She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.

She sold me a storm when my anger was strong

And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter

I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song

And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.

She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.

The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.

The second my woman made into a broth.

The third waits unused, for we reconciled.

She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives

Bound the winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there,

The women at home lived much happier lives

Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.

The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt,

As big as a fist and as dark as a heart

There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt

While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.

(But he never came back. He never came back . . .)

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree

She lived in the house of a hundred clocks

She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea

And she kept her life in a box.

In Relig Odhráin

When Saint Columba landed on the island of Iona

His friend Oran landed with him

Though some say Saint Oran waited

In the shadows of the island, waiting for the saint to land there,

I believe they came together, came from Ireland, were like brothers

Were the blond and brave Columba and the dark man they called Oran.

He was odrán, like the otter, was the other. There were others

And they landed on Iona and they said, We’ll build a chapel.

It’s what saints did when they landed. ( Oran: priest of sun or fire

Or from odhra, meaning dark-haired.) But their chapel kept on crumbling.

And Columba took the answer from a dream or revelation,

That his building needed Oran, needed death in the foundations.

Others claim it was doctrinal, and Saints Oran and Columba

Were debating, as the Irish love debating, about Heaven,

Since the truth is long-forgotten we are left with just their actions

(By their actions shall ye know them): Saint Columba buried Oran

Still alive, with earth about him, buried deep, with earth upon him.

Three days later they returned there, stocky monks with spades and mattocks

And they dug down to Saint Oran, so Columba could embrace him

Touch his face and say his farewells. Three days dead. They brushed the mud off

When Saint Oran’s eyes blinked open. Oran grinned at Saint Columba.

He had died but now was risen, and he said the words the dead know,

In a voice like wind and water.

He said, Heaven is not waiting for the good and pure and gentle

There’s no punishment eternal, there’s no Hell for the ungodly

Nor is God as you imagine—

Saint Columba shouted ‘Quiet!’

And to save the monks from error shovelled mud onto Saint Oran.

So they buried him forever. And they called the place Saint Oran’s.

In its churchyard kings of Scotland, kings of Norway, all were buried

On the island of Iona.

Some folk claim it was a druid priest of sunlight that was buried

In the earth of good Iona just to hold the church foundations,

But for me that’s much too simple, and it libels Saint Columba

(Who cried ‘Earth! Throw earth on Oran, stop his mouth with mud this moment,

Lest he bring us to perdition!’). They imagine it a murder

As one saint entombed another underneath that holy chapel.

While Saint Oran’s name continues,

Martyred heretic, his bones still hold the chapel stones together,

And we join them, kings and princes, in his graveyard, in his chapel,

For it’s Oran’s name they carry. He’s embraced in his damnation

By the simple words he uttered. There’s no Hell to spite the sinners.

There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.

And perhaps he kept on preaching, for he’d died and he had risen,

Until silenced, crushed or muffled by the soil of Iona.

Saint Columba, he was buried on the island of Iona

Decades later. But they disinterred his body and they took it

To Downpatrick, where it’s buried with Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.

So the only saint is Oran on the island of Iona.

Don’t go digging in that graveyard for the kings of old, the mighty,

Or archbishops and their riches. They are guarded by Saint Oran

Who will rise up from the gravedirt like the darkness, like an otter,

For he sees the sun no longer. He will touch you,

He will taste you, he will leave his words inside you.

(God is not what you imagine. Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven.)

Then you’ll leave him and his graveyard, and forget the shadow’s terror,

As you rub your neck, remember only this: he died to save us.

And that Saint Columba killed him on the island of Iona.

Black Dog

There were ten tongues within one head

And one went out to fetch some bread,

To feed the living and the dead.

Old Riddle

I

The Bar Guest

Outside the pub it was raining cats and dogs.

Shadow was still not entirely convinced that he was in a pub. True, there was a tiny bar at the back of the room, with bottles behind it and a couple of the huge taps you pulled, and there were several high tables and people were drinking at the tables, but it all felt like a room in somebody’s house. The dogs helped reinforce that impression. It seemed to Shadow that everybody in the pub had a dog except for him.

‘What kind of dogs are they?’ Shadow asked, curious. The dogs reminded him of greyhounds, but they were smaller and seemed saner, more placid and less high-strung than the greyhounds he had encountered over the years.

‘Lurchers,’ said the pub’s landlord, coming out from behind the bar. He was carrying a pint of beer that he had poured for himself. ‘Best dogs. Poacher’s dogs. Fast, smart, lethal.’ He bent down, scratched a chestnut-and-white brindled dog behind the ears. The dog stretched and luxuriated in the ear-scratching. It did not look particularly lethal, and Shadow said so.

The landlord, his hair a mop of grey and orange, scratched at his beard reflectively. ‘That’s where you’d be wrong,’ he said. ‘I walked with his brother last week, down Cumpsy Lane. There’s a fox, a big red reynard, pokes his head out of a hedge, no more than twenty metres down the road, then, plain as day, saunters out onto the track. Well, Needles sees it, and he’s off after it like the clappers. Next thing you know, Needles has his teeth in reynard’s neck, and one bite, one hard shake, and it’s all over.’

Shadow inspected Needles, a grey dog sleeping by the little fireplace. He looked harmless too. ‘So what sort of a breed is a lurcher? It’s an English breed, yes?’