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    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay
    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay
    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay

    By Jennifer Bresnick

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    About this ebook

    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay is a collection of short stories, poems, and vignettes that have been featured on Inkless: A Writer’s Blog over the past several years. It also includes several unpublished works. While these thematically diverse pieces include fantasy as well as realistic fiction, all attempt to explore the impact of solitude, sorrow, hope, and longing on how we see and believe in the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJennifer Bresnick
    Release dateAug 24, 2014
    ISBN9781310264672
    Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay
    Author

    Jennifer Bresnick

    Jennifer Bresnick is a 2007 graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a major in history. Born and raised on Long Island, NY, she now resides in the Boston area, fervently avoiding all discussions about professional sports.When she isn't writing down the conversations in her head to give them an appearance of respectability, Jen enjoys crocheting silly animal hats, being creative in the kitchen, and on a completely unrelated note, putting out kitchen fires.

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      Book preview

      Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay - Jennifer Bresnick

      SALT AND OIL, BLOOD AND CLAY

      Jennifer Bresnick

      Aenetlif Press

      Published in the United States of America

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Bresnick

      All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission from the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      PREFACE

      Salt and Oil, Blood and Clay is a collection of short stories, poems, and vignettes that have been featured on Inkless: A Writer’s Blog over the past several years. It also includes several unpublished works. While thematically diverse, these pieces all attempt to explore the impact of solitude, sorrow, hope, and longing on how we see and believe in the world.

      CONTENTS

      The Terracotta Girl

      April Mornings

      He Belongs to the Sea

      Manu and the Wall

      For Love

      Sunset

      High O’er the Mist

      Salt and Oil

      Memory Lane

      Collecting Dust

      On Angst

      The Book of Yew

      Melted Cheese

      The Myth

      My Mother Named Me Harthacanute

      Autumn Words

      Give and Take

      The Earthstepper’s Bargain

      THE TERRACOTTA GIRL

      Each day she sits by the wheel, my girl of tears and clay, watching it spin lumps like her into pots and bowls of use and grace. With fingers moist and nimble, a push, a nudge, a swoop, a pinch, transforms the soil into phoenix form, but she remains the earth’s favorite creation.

      I watch her watch her father, sitting still, crouched like a frog as only his hands dance, and the hired boy’s feet gallop on the petals like mud-covered catfish dancing for a fly. He hums a song to himself to keep the time, his vacant eyes barely watching the master at his art, the extraordinary turned mundane by long hours waiting for his bones to grow too long for such a simple task. He is not the first, and he is one of many, and his life will trace a circle like the lives of his fathers before.

      It’s the girl who is special. The fine arch of her brow; the delicate tracery of a tendril of hair that curls around her ear like a whisper, and her almond eyes that watch her father, cool and unblinking, as he watches his fingers and the curve of the clay, minutely adjusting, pressure and light and a flick of his wrist.

      I love my terracotta girl. The fall of her robe over her shoulders, the straightness of her back as she waits with infinite serenity, hands folded, patience and contemplation written in the soft arch of her brow. She does not watch me. I am not a creature of tranquility, and I hold no interest for her. She does not feel my love. What she feels is rain and wind and curiosity, a nod of approval or the tap of a fingernail that cannot believe her before a man wanders away.

      She learned her ignorance from her father, who pays no mind to anyone who comes near her without a coin. The boy must eat, and so must he, but my terracotta girl abstains. She hungers for nothing; she consumes only my heart. I watch her, unperturbed, as her father cleans his hands at the end of the day, the water flicking onto her flinchless face and running down her cheeks as she mourns her nightly solitude. She will wait for him, and I will go inside my house, waiting for the day my terracotta girl will learn to smile.

      APRIL MORNINGS

      With warm weather comes the promise

      That the steel of my heart, tempered

      With short, cold winter afternoons

      Will soften a little in the sun –

      Just enough to let you see

      That it’s hollow inside,

      And rings like a bell

      Every time another

      Blow is struck.

      HE BELONGS TO THE SEA

      It was nightfall when the blood came. William had been set to sitting and watching, so the surgeon could attend to others. He had never seen so much before. The fall had cracked the old man’s ribs, a crunch and a cry as he hit the rail before tumbling over into the water, but he had swum to the rope that had been cast for him, and hauled himself back up onto the deck.

      Only later, after the sun had fallen and a spray of stars had replaced its light, had he shown any sign of illness. The weakness came, and under the break was the blood. The surgeon had shaken his head and lashed him into his hammock, and told William not to take his eyes off him as his chest rose and fell with the rocking of the waves. Dutifully, he had watched as the man slipped into fever, knowing that for him to see the next day’s dawn would require the wings of a miracle. He had seen death. He just hadn’t seen so much blood.

      I don’t think he had any family, sir, William said when the surgeon had closed the man’s startled eyes, wiped the gore from his beard, and asked William the question that was asked of all men when they died. He belonged to the sea.

      The surgeon nodded and didn’t look too surprised. On one hand, it didn’t matter that much. The man would be sewn up inside the bed where he died, a pair of cannon shot at his feet and a prayer read as quickly as was decent, so the rest of the

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