{"id":1515,"date":"2014-10-31T17:01:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T07:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2014-11-01T17:17:05","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T07:17:05","slug":"twenty-six-the-death-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1515","title":{"rendered":"twenty-seven (the death of the year)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"corpse<\/a>I am interested in usable truths.<\/p>\n

I am interested in\u00a0food I can eat, water I can drink, and stories I can tell.<\/p>\n

I am interested in doorways and roads: leading in, leading out.<\/p>\n

I am interested in stones, particularly the stones that mark the path\u00a0we must walk tonight.<\/p>\n

My mother has died, and her corpse lies on the table, ready for travelling. She has coins in her pockets and wheat in her shoes. The local church has no\u00a0stomach for burying witches, so tonight my brothers and I will carry her, feet first, from here to St Agnes’ of Erldale, there to be interred. In preparation for the journey, I have filled my pockets with\u00a0river stones. Round and smooth as pearls.<\/p>\n

The corpse road is a spirit’s path, passing not only between our village and the churchyard, but also\u00a0between this life and another, between this world and the next, though it belongs to neither. It is, like me,\u00a0an in-between\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n

I take the corners of the sheet\u00a0at\u00a0my mother’s head and my youngest brother takes the other end. We lift her up and carry her out to the cart. I remember when she and I\u00a0used to carry him like this, in a hammock of clean sheets, and swing him as\u00a0he laughed. Onto the cart we heave her now, no laughter to be heard,\u00a0and we’re away.<\/p>\n

The dark washes up in our wake, like an eager tide. At each cairn I leave a stone to mark our passing. And all night, as we walk, till my throat is hoarse and the dark is so thick it\u00a0lies heavy in\u00a0my bones,\u00a0I sing the\u00a0grieving song\u00a0my mother\u00a0taught me, just as she said to:\u00a0wild and terrible and low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am interested in usable truths. I am interested in\u00a0food I can eat, water I can drink, and stories I can tell. I am interested in doorways and roads: leading in, leading out. I am interested in stones, particularly the stones that mark the path\u00a0we must walk tonight. My mother has died, and her corpse…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[725,1,167,288],"tags":[722,727,825,824,823,728,822,826],"class_list":["post-1515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-200-words-200-days","category-misc","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-200-days","tag-200-words","tag-corpse-path","tag-corpse-road","tag-halloween","tag-microfiction","tag-samhain","tag-witch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-or","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Blowing-in-the-wind-Dar-007.jpg?fit=460%2C276","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions\/1523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}