Feet unshod break on stones; like landed fish, beating blood out of themselves.

And weaving through a dawn that is no more than a pastel shrug, knelt upon by navy cloud, soft music swoops in swallow flight, a throstling low and suddenly high, and she is made keep time with it.

Her tongue has licked the clay from lips—makes of them a vivid soft of red, slung in ragged slavering pant— save for this, dust kicked from the arid field has coloured her as stone; face, arms, hair— what remains of her nightdress—all are petrified in grey.

And there are words, flung away from her with dying strength:

“You—”

“Have you ever thought—”

“The fault’s yours—”

“Yours, and not mine—”

Heavy and shirtless in callous gloom, he plays the clarinet for her—his lips are strokes of chalk in pink, eyes pale thumbnails in sunburnt skin, his fingers wriggling abyssal things...

And life is leaving through her mouth:

“You don’t—”

“Have the right—”

“No-one has the right—”

“To make me—”

“Feel—”

“Like—”

“This—”

And as he plays, she jerks and shudders and breaks under the music—

Blood on the clay.

Blood on the leaves.

She kicks amongst the cabbages.

And screams.

*

This child loved to skip and run, and it had rained that morning, leaving clear and crisp-edged puddles scattered on the gravel path. In yellow wellies he scurries from one to the next; laughing, sploshing, kicking glittering water into the sky.

Just a breath behind, Uncle Martin smiles. He is a big and bearded man, shirtsleeves rolled to show the meat and hair of forearm, his forehead a corrugated plate of pork— but his mouth is small and delicate—a cupid’s bow, hidden in the midst of hair.

And slung over his shoulder on a homemade leather strap— the clarinet.

 Today, they are going to see the field where the calves are kept.

Coming through the white boulders that block the lane, they pass a threadbare hedge made ill by effluent from the silage pits.

“Look,” said Uncle Martin, his hand pressing on the boy’s shoulder. He turned his head, followed the pointing finger.

“A robin!” cooed the boy— on cue, the little bird cocked its head, danced a step or two and wagged its tail—a friendly thing!

Uncle Martin grinned and smudged his tongue over his lips.

“Shall we play with it?” he said

“Oh, let’s!” said the boy, jigging in the puddles. “Yippeee!”

“Watch,” said Uncle Martin, his thumb working the soft cables of the boy’s neck.

Slowly the clarinet was brought to his puckering mouth and the child looked upon the instrument and grinned— greased black wood the body of the thing, encaged in shining platinum like melted rods of bone.

And as Uncle Martin’s fingers spasmed on the keywork, as notes tumbled from the clarinet faster and faster— the robin hopped!

Once!

Twice!

And began to inflate!

“Cor!” crowed the child.

Darting eyes like pearls of coal, stubby wings in frantic whir— the robin kicks its twiggy feet but flight is lost to it— like a goitre swollen it tips upon its side and grows— red breast bubbling to swallow head, feathers sticking out reveal white flesh between, increasingly transparent.

Laughing, the boy danced to the rushing, scurrying music, seeming to him a living thing—pink nosed, ferret-bodied, scampering along a riverbank at night to empty the nests of sleeping birds—

The music warbled to an end—

With a slimy, farting hiss the robin deflated—it tried to fly and failed—tried again— and this time it bobbed unsteadily along the hedgerows, shedding feathers and calling, madly calling—

“Oh no! Don’t let it get away!” cried the child.

Quickly, Uncle Martin parped a G-flat and the robin—

Popped.

“Yaay!” The child clapped and laughed!

“You like that?” asked Uncle Martin. A valve opened to drain spit onto the gravel.

“Oh yes!” laughed the child. “You could tell he knew what was happening!”

Uncle Martin chuckled, shook the last gob of spittle from the end of his instrument.

The child took his arm— “Do something else! Oh please—play another song! Make something happen!”

And as luck would have it, just then an arcing wing of geese clattered through the sky over the farm.

The child threw his hands up—“Make them burn, Uncle Martin!”

Another song is played; high and trickling and the flock is burst asunder, trailing members spinning off as if a punch had landed in their midst.

Slowly, the flock pulled together, shepherded its wayward members and flew behind a stand of leafless trees.

The child’s smile faded.

“Nothing’s happened to them.”

His face was thunder

“The clarinet didn’t do anything.”

Uncle Martin smiles.

“Oh no?”

“No”, the child says, pouting.

Uncle Martin winks. “Well, all those geese...”

“Yes?”

“They’ve just lost their virginity.”

The child broke into a huge toothy smile. “Wow! Ace!”

And the flock flew on, though honking noticeably shriller.

Shouldering the clarinet, Uncle Martin looked at his watch. “Hmmm. Times against us. Best be getting on.” So they held hands and came at last to the field where the calves were kept.

Clasping the gate, the child watched the skinny long-legged things grazing or clumsily loping to the water trough.

Two calves lay nearby, their spindly limbs curled up underneath, jaws jerking sideways in unhurried mastication, cloth ears flopping to shoo the flies acrawl on snout and eye. They looked upon the boy and man with heavy-lidded disinterest.

“Why was it so important to come see the calves today, Uncle Martin?”

The man gave no answer, but curving lips spoke of some amusement.

“Uncle Martin?” the child whispered, “Why is it important?”

And the hands of Uncle Martin rose and placed the soft bulb of the clarinet amidst the pinkness of his mouth.

Cheeks engorged.

And music was low and unsettling; curdling in the softness of belly and bowel— whirl music, giddy music— making the fillings in your molars ring—

The child watched the calves rise on their hind legs, lowing, bleating, shambling towards the gate, stiff limbs kicking scrawny bodies forward—

Embedded in neckskin— children faces, stretched in torment—

Hooves opening to show imploring hands, stained with muck and waving—

Piebald skin revealed as cloaks of cowflesh, badly stitched, held in place with rope—

And voices blurt cud-stained half-bleats—“Help us—help us—we’re children— children like you!”

And Uncle Martin blows upon his clarinet and his eyes are mad and laughing coins, jingling on the end of strings, his eyebrows dancing lengths of caterpillar fluff—

And the child-calves scream with mouth and muzzle alike:

“He stole us!”

“We made the wrong choice!”

“We made the wrong choice!”

“Uncle Martin!” cries the child, staggering back, “Uncle Martin— Make them stop!”

Shambling, tumbling over themselves— they seem to have too many legs, too many knees— a tide of limbs and bone-strung flesh and lunging through the bars they grab the child by wrist, by arm, by neck and by ankle and pull him towards that butchershop of calf-boys.

Snotty pink muzzles push forwards and down, musty jaw-reeks heavy with rotting grass, and the muck of the field is caked in creases around pleading mouths. And the stink—hot smells, dirt smells— and they claw for his mouth, his eyes, screaming “Help us! Help! Only you can help us!”

And through the stew of haunches, hooves and rolling eyes, the child sees Uncle Martin kicking feet high in the air, dancing on the gravel— cheeks two wobbling bladders, eyes two points of gold at the end of the screeching clarinet—

The child shuts his eyes and wails—

And then...

The music dies.

Loosed suddenly— a screaming thing in darkness flung, the child in tumbling lands with a scrushing of gravel, a splashing of water.

For a moment he lies, breathing heavily, blithely stinging from a dozen shallow scrapes.

No hands or hooves holding him—

He hadn’t been taken...

He opened his eyes.

All the boys were calves again, lying in grass like trapezoids of meat.

Uncaring.

Soaked in the puddle he sat, watching.

Their screaming faces had been swallowed. Hands had disappeared. You couldn’t see the stitches...

Uncle Martin lifted the boy out of the puddle.

“Was that real?” sobbed the child. “Was that real?”

“C’mon,” said Uncle Martin. “Let’s get home. Cabbage for dinner.”

And they walked back up the gravel way, back to the farmhouse.

What a fun day!

*

All waking is slowness—first the feel of covers and then the pillow scent, and darkness then, coming to shape—

His eyes open.

Uncle Martin is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room.

His lips, nuzzling the clarinet.

Groggy, the boy wipes sleep away. “Uncle Martin?”

The man’s voice is rough. “Do you remember yet?”

“Remember what?” Sleep knocks edges off the boy’s words.

Uncle Martin stares at the floor. “Give it a moment.”

And a light seems to flare in the child’s widening eyes— shuddering once, twice, his voice is suddenly six years older: “Who are you? Where—where am I?”

“Shut up,” growls the man.

“But I— I was at a party— she just went inside to get me ice cream—”

“Shut up!” the man screams.

And there is a moment of syrup thickness, sweet and heavy, the bare room creaking with threats unspoken. And into that long moment, the man drops cold and heavy words.

“She couldn’t give me boys. She left me with no-one to pass this on to. Any of this,” he gestures vaguely. “The farm. The house. The clarinet. I took her out to the cabbage field. I played a lovely song for her.”

The man looks upon the boy in bed. A sneer of light on forehead and cheek, the rest in darkness.

“I didn’t give her a choice.”

Light is on the clarinet and it is a limb in silver and black.

“But you’ll get to choose. I can keep on making you forget every few days. You can stay on the farm with me and one day, it’ll be yours.”

He leant forward.

“But you’ll be mine. You’ll be what I make you.”

The child cannot look away.

“Or,” the man says, “You can go back to that.”

He points at the walker half-covered by clothes against the wall. “You remember what it was like?

Dragged along on twisted feet, and doctors saying it could only get worse. Wheels by Christmas, Tom. Wheels by Christmas...”

His voice is edged: “But the clarinet makes you better. I make you better.”

The boy gasps— “I can’t feel them—”

And in the darkness, the man is laughing. “Ah. Now you remember.”

The child pulls his dead weight up in bed, effort studding grunts between his words— “I remember! I remember the things you made me say and do! The awful things you made me enjoy—”

The clarinet is an oily rod in the lap of the man.

“The robin,” the boy says, and his voice breaks—“You made me laugh at the robin... Why did you do that to me?”

Souring, the man slams his fist upon his thigh: “Choose!”

And when that thunder dies the boy closes his eyes and whispers: “I want to walk.”

His strength is leaving through his mouth: “I want to walk.”

And there are tears between his kissing lids.

“Please.”

Is he smiling?

Is the man smiling?

It is too dark to tell.

But his voice is clear: “Sleep. Let yourself go back under.”

The boy slumps, defeated.

“We’ll talk again same time next week.”

And the man who calls himself Uncle Martin sits back, raises the clarinet and begins to play, fingers aslither like worms during rain...

And the clarinet sings...

Ferret-bodied and scuttling, on a moonlit riverbank...

The angled arc of swallows in flight— looping, diving, twisting back...

A shadow fluttering, fluttering on the edge of sleep...