Pence Read online

  *****

  It was another full day before the crowd around the fence dared to go inside and see what had happened, and only then because a small nut wren with two broken wings whistled to them that the fight was over.

  Few of the congregated creatures would venture beyond the threshold of the gate. It was only the tinker man and his woman–both their hats full of nervous, curious birds–to enter the garden to see what could be set right.

  The stump was deformed, shaped like two people curled together. There was a small white sapling growing from a tiny hole in the center of its surface, but there was no evidence of tragedy, no blood, no bodies. There was a knife stuck deep into the stump, but when the man tried to remove it the blade would not draw free.

  The man and woman left the stump and approached the well. There was a dead hand gloved in black leather and a bald, scabby head lying on the ground, its pale cranium covered in white and purple spots of dried droppings. Birds dove for the gloved hand and pulled at the fingers, flying away in a five-ended tug-o-war.

  The tinker man skewered the Prince’s head with a spear. The woman picked up the purple top hat from beside the path before they left the garden.

  Outside the gate, the man set his spear in the ground with the grisly, bloodied head spit atop it. The Prince’s eyes were still bulging and crossed as though trying to see the spike that protruded from the center of his skull. The woman put the stovepipe hat on top as a finishing touch.

  The man took the bicycle, as any tinker worth his title would, then he and his woman herded their children together and left the foothills at sunset. Wagon tracks told the trail in the dry dirt and clay.

  Perched atop the Prince’s whittled-down nose, the nut wren watched them drive away, then she nestled herself underneath the purple hat. It would be warm and safe until her wings healed. She pecked at the flaky skin and brittle skull until she had dug an opening in the bone like an ice-fishing hole. “Joy! Brains!” she piped. “Even better than guts and gall bladder.”