Felted

The story begins realistically, with bread and wood and yarns spun.

Though hungry, the elders feed the children one fig, one filbert apiece.

After the children are reined in and sleeping under wool, the parents speak of what to do once hunger has bruised even their care for each other.

They’d been frugal, Mother argued with Father. They pulled spider webs down and packed them along the cracks in the wall for insulation. What more of a gesture could be made?

And despite all, end still stretched for end.

The children woke in the night and heard their parents come to a decision.

They knew fear when they met each other’s glares; but home was not yet a place that could be left.

They knew they only needed to sleep through the night to wake up again.

So into an unlulled sleep they went, willfully hopeful.

They woke to their parents’ lifting arms. Their expressions appeared stern, but behind their mother’s eyes they saw that gossamer love they wanted so badly to prevail. In their father’s brow they saw the prayer that this was the right decision.

And into the forest the children were driven by their parents’ resignation, by the wet spring wind, by the snagging branches of the black hickory and alpine ash.

Their wool trousers blistered and their skin grew loose. The loaves of bread they carried against their hips left a trail of crumbs behind them, though they knew they would never return.

The steeples and spires and minarets of their fantasies fell through to the gutters and sewers of marshlands, the trenches of nature.

And wading through all of this circumstance, the children made this rhyme about the past:

Roll it over gently.

Twist it on the spot.

Pull it out and pull it through.

Tie it in a knot.