Windows to Miracles
JOEY MILLER
Click on the windows to see what lies beyond.
Isolation
Rubber slaps against broom-finished pavement. Sweat dapples at the back of my neck, air burns on its way in and out of my lungs. My heart and feet beat out of time with one another, a polyrhythmic symphony. The air smells of crisp, vaporised water; dew disrupted by my morning run. I can see my breath trailing in the bottom of my vision, each exhale a searing reminder of my efforts. All is quiet, save for the clatter of my own footfalls and the occasional bird fleeing. Even the road beside me is quiet at this time of morning. My only obstacles are my own limits. I could be one good leap from taking off and flying away.
The world wakes and I am already racing past it.
Birthright
I was born under bad stars. That’s what people say, at least. An uncle told me once that it wasn’t always that way. I’d been a miracle baby at first. My parents prayed to God for a child, which means once upon a time I was a divine blessing. Then they had my brother, which really took the holy wind out of my sails.
Misfortune lingers around me like a shroud. Seasoned workers will hammer their thumbs, meals will burn, pets go missing.
Yeah, not so holy anymore. As I grew, so did the misfortune. If a boy fell and broke his arm at the schoolyard, it was because our shadows crossed moments before. If a teacher fell sick, I had coughed nearby. A failed harvest was because I shook hands with the farmer’s son at market on the weekend. By the time I finished school my peers would leave me a wide berth. Hell, by then the God-fearing adults of my village would avoid even making eye contact with me.
There’s a knock at my door.
‘Maya?’
‘Yes, father?’ I open the door to my shack. It squats at the end of my parent’s land, where the grasslands meet the trees. I built it myself since finishing school and I’ve since made it warm with pelts hunted by my own hand. No matter my effort with homemade candles, I cannot get the smell of offal out of the walls.
‘Csaba has come down with a fever.’
‘I haven’t seen him in weeks.’ I reply reflexively, even though I don’t sense any accusation in the words.
‘No, of course.’ Still, my father sounds relieved. ‘You have to go into town to get his medicine.’
‘Yes, father.’ I take my cloak from its hook in one hand and hold out the other. He drops a pouch of coins into it, making sure our fingers don’t graze each other’s by accident. ‘I need to see Voski, anyway.’
My father wrinkles his nose at the merchant’s name but he nods all the same.
*
Voski’s store is similar to my hut – hidden at the furthest edge of town so people can easily pretend it’s not there at all. But Voski will deal with me, unlike the folks at market who hide their dogs behind them as I pass by.
With Csaba’s medicine in hand I enter. Stepping into the shop is an assault. The mildew smell is just strong enough to make one’s gorge rise if they’re weak of spirit. All I can see by is what feeble rays of sun make it through the grime-coated windows. Netting is draped around the room as though it might hide the obvious decay of the woodwork – something green and wet lives in patches on the timber of the walls, eating the planks away like a slow death. Hunting supplies of all sorts sit on shelves and hang from the walls, metal and sharp and uninviting.
‘Thought you were coming tomorrow.’ Voski spits, excess saliva doing nothing to soothe the croak of his voice. His skin sags and wrinkles around his face like old leather, aged well beyond his years. I’m pretty sure he’s sixty at most. A closed bear trap hangs on the wall behind him, surely as old as he is.
‘What’s this?’ I slam his letter on the counter between us, rattling the surplus scattered across it.
‘Didn’t realise the curse meant you couldn’t read.’
‘I already paid you.’ I insist.
‘Someone else came asking for bear fat.’ Voski shrugs. ‘He’s willing to buy you out so he doesn’t have to wait for the next delivery.’
‘But I already paid.’
‘I’m not scared of you, girl.’ He barks. I’ve stepped closer to him, drawn myself up to my full height – a fair sight taller than him. I hunt for my food, I know my form is intimidating. ‘There’s no such thing as a curse.’
‘No?’ I growl, hands flashing out against his chest to shove him as hard as I am able.
*
My hut stinks of tallow. For the second time today a knock interrupts my work.
‘Yes, father?’ I open the door for him and again he doesn’t step inside. I keep my eyes on the yellow fat slowly rendering on my stovetop.
‘Voski is dead.’
I look at him. ‘What?’
‘Voski was found dead an hour ago.’
‘What happened?’
‘That bear trap on his back wall fell on him. It looks like the board it was nailed to was rotten through with termites.’
‘That’s a shame.’ I say.
‘They told me it was closed around his head. Can’t imagine.’
‘Awful.’ I echo the deadened tone of my father. ‘Horrible.’
They say I was born under bad stars.
Ignorance
When darkness threatens to swallow everything it touches, there’s no magic more powerful than trusting the sun will rise again come the morning. I have faith that’ll I’ll get to see it, day and day and day again.
Devotion
Light limning the hairs of a bare shoulder, sloping up to neck, to jaw, to mouth. Beauty, mapped out in lines and curves and spots and scars. A wrinkle here, from a lifetime of smiling. A mark there, from picking a scab. The dirt under nails. My hand put to another’s skin – I watch the way it creases and dips under my touch, warm and reactive. They tense, though not unpleasantly. The touch makes them gasp in their body, the twitching of muscle in their stomach. I can press my mouth there and feel them leap. Shadows cast through messed hair, rough palms joining in the spare light, finding purchase in another person. Another person finding purchase in myself.
Intimacy.
We all do it.
I do it.
It’s not vulgar or conceited or taboo – it’s beauty. It’s magic.
Magic is other people.
Addiction
It’s nothing. I don’t have it, other people have it. I drink, I smoke; I want it. But I can’t have it.
I don’t get it on my own, right? But I can take it, and god is there magic in that. In their loosely held fingers I will grasp it and tear it away and make it as worthy as cigarette ash under my attention. It dissolves in my grip but even in the dissolving I held it. Clutched, squandered, and sought again.
Like you’ve never wanted to be something else. Like you don’t want to forget from time to time. I guess there’s that, though, for me. Something in the taking itself. The moment of transfusion, when something goes from someone else’s to mine. Even though I have nothing, I can still take. I can take, and then someone else has less. I like that idea. I like that idea a lot…
…
Or you could always buy me a drink. Out of the kindness of your heart, we could call it that.
Maybe that can be your magic.
Joey Miller is a non-binary, California-born, Sydney-raised, and rural-living author. They live with their wife and two cats and specialise in creating fictional women who are completely miserable. Beyond writing they have a passion for games, riddles, and all things puzzles.
