Loris Lowe

As the church bell sounded the last deep toll of the eleven, the wet, mizzling rain suddenly stopped and in the silence, a blackbird began to sing in the apple orchard by the memorial. Standing in his old great coat, still flecked with mud, the Doctor remembered another little blackbird calling in a wood where bodies lay. These were songs of God, he thought, longing for a cigarette, of a God who fell in strips of light in cottage parlours when the telegrams were read in trembling hands, in the piping larks who rose above the shelling, of the sudden singing of the Welshmen along the trench, rich and dark and as holy as Christmas night.

The Fox of Greenwich Village walked down to the coffee shop. He hadn't slept. The worst had happened. The owner usually sung opera as he worked. Today, he wasn't even there, just one of his children, who looked tired. The Fox sat at his favourite seat and thought about what had happened, but he couldn't frame the pieces in his mind, they mismatched and refused to cohere. The door opened and shut, orders were made, first cigarettes lit. He thought about the smallness of his life, his music, his writing, his apartment, and wondered what anyone could do. He sighed and put his head in his paws. "No, no, no. Don't despair, don't give up," said a voice suddenly behind him, an old badger who'd been sitting at the counter, a professor he'd seen around from time to time, at poetry readings and parties. "We become the light, now, Fox, we become the light, the fire, the unquenchable flame, the kindling hope. There is no-one else. Remember that, we are all that will hold the line, there is no-one else." And with that, the badger paid his bill, picked up his stick and was gone, into the heavy autumn light, into the push and bustle of the street, without even waiting for a reply.

Old Fox and the Goddess of War were standing at the edge of a newly ploughed field up on the hamlet heights. Before them, on the horizon, was the sea, the dark, silvery colour of barrow swords. Above, two buzzards circled. The Goddess of War had a dress of bronze flecked in red. She wore no shoes. What will happen to him, asked Old Fox. What happens to all monsters in the end, said the Goddess.