First posted May 2023.

They say our village is cursed. Splintered bones wash ashore on our beaches, grey clouds obscure the sky day and night, and the fires in our fireplaces cannot stand up to the howling wind sweeping down our chimneys. Every time a child falls and scrapes a knee, every time a delivery is late, every time an old tool breaks, the people of our village shake their heads and murmur, “The curse, the curse.” Rotting piles of wood tower at the end of our roads where houses once stood: reminders of all we have lost.

I ask why we do not rebuild them. They shake their heads. “The curse, the curse.”

Last spring, there were roses. I remember their bright pink blooms, each bigger than one of my hands. The air smelled like growing, like soil and like life. Yellow dandelions poked their heads up from beneath the rubble. “Look,” I pleaded, pointing to the flowers. The people shook their heads at the piles of broken stones and decaying wood. “We see,” they said to the wreckage. Unheeded, the breeze ruffled my hair and the flower petals.

Together, we sing songs in the darkness. Their mournful dirges do not fit in my mouth; their minor keys always come out of me in major. Alone, my voice is discordant and silly. Still, I sing.

Eventually, other voices join me. My feet are light as I dance with the girl from next door, who wears a freshly-cut pink rose in her hair. Instruments made from debris, out of tune and loud as winter gales, play music too joyous to be constrained by such things as melody or rhythm. As they watch us, the others shake their heads. “No food for the feast,” they mourn as we celebrate.

At the edge of the sea, the waves drop uprooted plants and shells with telltale holes bored through them. The others shake their heads as they scoop handfuls of death from the shore. “The curse, the curse,” they mutter and moan. I slip my hand into the hand of the girl next door. Over the water, the clouds part, and I feel sunlight on my face.