Short story: Welcome to the Future Way-friend by Jonah Jones

She stepped gently through the forest as she listened to the howling of wolves carried upon the night air.

They were telling brave tales of the way things had once been and, by sad comparison, lamenting the future.

They found her and began to circle, wondering at the sight before them. On her part, she had no fear – they were creatures of the moon, therefore they knew her.

Their world and hers were equally vulnerable to the new monstrous dominion.

“Why are you here, lonely one?” they asked.

“I seek the holy man.”

“We will guide you.”

Doom

The pack formed up either side of her and led her through the forest they yet claimed as their own, knowing that her arrival presaged their doom.

Down in the hollow, nurtured by the stream, there stood the group of wooden buildings where the last of the old holy folk went about their connection with God and His creatures.

Illtud couldn’t sleep. The night of the new Roman year had turned cold and he was shivering under the thin blanket. Looking out of the little window, he could see that there was a near full moon, so there would be enough light for him to find another blanket without having to light a candle.

At that moment he realised that it wasn’t simply the cold that had woken him but an insistent knocking on the door of the college.

He walked barefoot to the door and opened it to find a strange and thrilling sight – a thin-fleshed un-shod mare standing in that moonlight of the turning year, nodding her head at him.

Visitation

She was the colour of the grey landscape as if made of the moonlight herself and she cast no shadow. The scholar was struck by a brief sense of fear as he contemplated the visitation.

This creature was from a place and with a bearing beyond his knowing, sent from a time before his Lord Jesus had first set his stall.

She looked at him and sighed, her breath a cold spirit in the night air.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“Not of this world,” he replied.

She snorted. “Very much of this world. I am Mari Lwyd – Grey Mary – the horse cursed by your saviour.”

“Cursed? Jesus Christ would never curse any one of God’s creatures.”

She bowed her head in sorrow at the memory. “He cursed me when he was a baby, five hundred years ago.

“I am the horse thrown out of the stable so that he might have a place to sleep. From that time to this, I have walked the world, searching for a place I might call home.”

With the unassuming wisdom of the elder Christian faith, he smiled, threw the door wide open and set to kindling a fire.

“I understand betrayal and being made a refugee. Soon I will have to leave this place. The Roman Church is forcing us all out into the cold. We Celts and our ways have no place in this new world of rigid truth.”

Unsure

Mari was still unsure about crossing the threshold until he indicated that she should join him. Once she was inside, he closed the door and stroked her neck as she nuzzled him in return.

“Before I join you on the open road,’ he said, ‘be blessed and be welcome.”

The flame caught and the room was lit up like a new dawn in the night.

The faces of the ancients smiled as they were warmed.

“Welcome, until I may welcome you no more.”