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The Meddler

In a forest deep as the sea and dark as your pocket, the trees could not find the light, so they twisted and turned, tangling their arms, holding each other in knotty embraces.

In the black branches lived the meddler.  Small, his body a twist of tree bark, eyes brighter than the stars hovering above the matted canopy, he liked to mix up the animals in the forest, taking parts from each and making new, strange creatures.  With the darkness at its thickest, he slipped from the desperate trees, hanging delicately from his long thin fingers.  A silent raindrop, he landed on the animal’s head.  Through its ear he crawled, to its eyes, leg, tail or foot, and nibbled away.  When enough pieces were stored in his tree’s black crown the meddler’s nimble fingers would stitch a new creature into being, and drop it back down to the forest floor to wend its muddled way through the loam.

But then he dropped onto a badger-snouted fox.  There was nothing of the animal he wanted to salvage.  The next day, it was a wolf with a hare’s hind legs.  A wren with beetle’s wings.  There were no more animals to meddle.

There was only the wind, rain and dark left for the meddler.  He sat in his tangled tree drumming his long fingers; what to do now?  But he was unaware that the dark, wind and rain were angry for all the confused meddled animals, and they threw a great storm at the sad bony trees. The meddler was tossed up above the forest, into the fierce wind, which pulled his thread fingers from his hands one by one, ripped his scrap of bark body in two, and scattered his eyes up to the heavens to glitter with the stars.

Shortlisted for the Fish One-page story prize 2008