The Knight and the Butcherbird

by Alix E. Harrow

She knew me then, at the beginning of ourselves, and she knew me now, here at the end, when she did not even know herself.

I couldn’t stop smiling—the euphoric, hysteric smile of a woman who has been lying on her lover’s grave and has just felt the earth move beneath her.

Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.

Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.

At six, I’d thought love was a full belly; at sixteen, I’d thought it was wildflowers and gooseberries and Mayapple’s mouth on mine. At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.

But she’d been willing to kill for me, and so she must have loved me, after all. As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as God loved the world: with blood on our hands.

Well, I was raised in the church, wasn’t I? That’s how a believer proves his love: blindly, on his knees.”