The Little Man in the Red Tree’s Roots

As children, we would go into the woods

to learn secrets from the little man who lived in the red tree’s roots.

I wanted to know, so I did as the others instructed. 

I knocked on the root knob and asked the secret of love.

Soon, I saw a dark shape shifting under the roots. 

The little man spoke: “I’ll tell you your true love’s name.”

I’d never thought to fear the little man until then.

But his buzzing voice revealed a hideous truth.

I wanted to betray my peers, to run and tell our parents of this horror. 

That’s when I felt his fingers grab me.

Despite my thrashing,

the fingers of the pink limbs reaching up from between the roots pinned me fast.

“Faith is your true love’s name,” the little man said. 

“She led you here, my son. Now join my other children.”

A Fate Worse Than Hunger

Three travelers arrived in a town on the mountain steppes

to find mass pyres smoking in empty streets.

Only a ponderous crone would come out to speak to them. 

She said, “This famine is our true king’s will.”

The swordsman of the three gripped his blade and stepped forth boldly,

wanting to slice into this king’s neck.

The crone cackled as if seeing the picture in his mind directly.

“No, our king is no villain in need of slaying.”

She gestured to a bone-thin woman

trembling with her children in a crooked door nearby.

“They suffer hunger willingly,

to avoid the creature who feasts upon only the well-fed,” she explained.

The crone stroked the swordsman’s arm,

judging him to be the meatiest of the three.