By Judy Darley
They dressed in the dark, fumbling over bootlaces and coal-black buttons. Lucinda picked up the ceramic gargoyle Crispin had given her early in their romance. He chose the straw doll Lucinda wove for their first anniversary.
It felt right to leave the offerings in the coppice outside the house they’d shared.
Lucinda deposited the gargoyle in an ivy-looped tree near the entrance. Crispin propped the doll against the exit stile.
Later, witnesses claimed the fire flared up at opposite ends of the woodland – two blazes rushing inwards till they fell into an embrace that lit up the sky.
Judy Darley is a British writer who can’t stop writing about the fallibilities and strengths of the human mind. Her second short fiction collection, Sky Light Rain, is due out in late 2019.
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