Freddie Halter has a worn sole. His left foot is fine; it follows a path as straight as a railway track. It’s his right one that derails, drawing semicircles in tow, collecting grit and gravel in the worn arches of his boot, as well as the stares from other morning walkers. But it has never once stopped him from making the half-mile trip to collect his soda bread from his favourite piekarnia on the street corner. He makes sure he is the first customer, before the loaves’ tanned shells have hardened, so that when he tears off a chunk, a doughy steam puff is freed.

This morning, Freddie is full of song. He whistles, loud and tuneful as a charm of finches, and buoyant to the rhythm of his uneven stride. He spots Tomasz. His old friend is unwinding the awning to his bakery, chalky palmprints smeared across his lap and buttocks. They flash teeth and cup each other’s shoulders.

“Mój przyjaciel.” My friend.

Inside, Tomasz has already prepared a paper bag and folded a proziaki inside with the change to Freddie’s one-hundred złoty banknote.

A man appears at the door to the tinkle of a bell overhead. He has propped his bicycle against the shop window, a wicker basket cable-tied to the front, rust curling from the frame.

He greets them both: “Gentlemen.”

Something twinges at Freddie, gentle but unignorable, like a child tugging at his threads from a former life. He can’t quite place it.

“Four bułka, please,” the man says, inhaling a whiff of the buns spaced across the stacks of trays at his side.

Freddie turns to leave. He pauses to the tap of a finger on his back. The cyclist squints at him; both minds scramble for something they’ve lost, except the item in question isn’t finding its place in their mouths.

“I…I wondered if you have far to go?” His eyes drift over Freddie’s lame limb. “It’s just, I have a bicycle, perhaps I could save you the trip next time and drop it off to you.”

“That’s kind. But the walk is what makes it all the more worth it.”

“Of course,” the man says, resting his elbows on the counter. His sleeves are drawn up to his mid-forearm revealing a string of digits too long to be an anniversary date.

Freddie says nothing. His head pops bubbles like the next batch of soda bread browning in the gas-fired oven, and suddenly he wishes he had brought his stick. Unthinking, he squeezes his right forearm, where his own digits are stamped.

Their eyes catch once more, their past lives caught in the glisten: both striped, bare-headed, and wincing at the whistle of cane through air, splintering shin.

Freddie and his right foot exit the shop to the bell’s chime. He has forgotten the tune he whistled. Instead, he stuffs a chunk of steaming bread into his mouth and shuffles the half-mile walk home.

The music is his marionette Dancing under rippling fingers— Eighty-eight plus him Somehow make infinity. A celestial intelligence moves him So that his fingers know before he Where they should land. He is immersed, Ensconced by melody, Suspended in space, When something takes flight And his aura is shot with colour: Golds, emeralds, amethysts, and rubies Glittering with a vibrancy unseen.

Is this not life?

The notes ring out Into collective captured consciousness; An awestruck silence As his sole lifts From the instrument’s brass tongue.

Lost in the furore Of whistle and applause Is his father And the sound of an empty heart brimming— A rich chord Of polyphonic dissonance, A collection of strings Wound tight. Shame is spotlighted In that dark tumult, A hazy vignette of disapproval, Watching boy on stool Wasting his hours. Now he wishes that courage were his, Because he knows, With his heart, That life is this.

The stranger in the street Was last night my friend. After untensing And splaying, backs-to-sheet, We guarded nothing; Laid bare our uncovered bodies And uncloseted skeletons, Chests damp and glistening In dawn’s raw light.

I remember well Beyond those walls The drone of distant siren, The city’s pulse, The anxious bustle of man lost in an endless soul-search, playing the unwinnable game of dress-up, a bearance of intolerable weight…

Yet there we lay.

And in that one wild moment I told you I was afraid.

“Me too.”

Even if just by a single fragile thread, Our spilled stories connected: A one-night strand That snapped as your feet passed the threshold.

Fingerlings’ tips fissure and rust, Their ageing grip grows weak, Riots of russet flutter and streak Earthbound, crumpling to dust. Suspended in air, a sulphur must, The bang of gunpowder and its reek, Dyeing nightskies into Javan batik, Swilled and rolled by November gust.

But she of blanching breath and bite Births sunspots in redemptive sigh: Imbued with scent of honey-sweet spice, Fire-warmed corners in candlelight And cinnamon dusting pumpkin pie, A joyous shudder with every slice!

Violence blooms in violet plumes As static charge from soft of palms Swells and swirls and dances forth, A skittering stone across a lake, Its touch a kiss of scorch and char, Marring plains to blackened dust.

In her smirk, a scheme unleashed; Lilac ghostly breaths take form, Of paw and snout and snarled fur, A famished beast bounds forth. It seeks out prey to quell its ire, And snuff her soul’s avenging fire.

Step and breath of quake and roar, Feverish with appetite unslaked, Tearing through darkness and flesh, Splattering sky with indigo confetti. A wake of ploughed lavender fields, And bone-scattered barren soils.

But eyes ablaze and resin-soaked Soon burn out like Stone Age torch, Fervour born of something sweeter, In its spent heart, a lone-wolf ache And a question of unfulfilled longing: What’s left when the smoke subsides?

The message was delivered on horseback, in snatched breaths and rushed words.

“My lady…we need you…arrow strike.”

Sirona was at her writing desk. She paused, ink pooling at the tip of her quill, a black-blotched full stop cutting short her letter. Her gaze lifted and landed on the paisley swirls of mist at the foot of the forest.

“I will come right away.” This letter could wait.

A twitch of her wrist and the messenger was gone.

In haste, she scooped the necessary dressings and tinctures into the compartments of her satchel: alcohol-soaked swabs, oils drawn from thyme, lavender and witch-hazel under the firm press of pestle, and, for closure, sutures—many of them—arced and pointed, gleaming like moonsickles. She pocketed antidotes from the cabinet too. Their corks were etched with runes only she recognised, though time had rendered these labels redundant: she could discern activated charcoal from dimercaprol solely from their legs and the way the liquid clung to the glass.

Now alone, and only ever alone, she draped a dove-white square of cloth over her head, a rite she never forwent. Her hands smoothed out the creases, until its hem swung at her waist. ‘Providence will guide you’, were the last words of her mother, ‘where I cannot’.

She’d recognised the messenger’s crest embroidered into his cloak. He was from Monningsull, a neighbouring hamlet just a stone’s throw from her cabin.

Brisk strides carried her over spongy earth, sword fern, liverworts and lichen, the cool breath of the forest climbing her ankles.

Something was chewing at her thoughts.

She sensed urgency. The man’s voice bore an unusual gravity that left her ill at ease. Arrow wounds were common: villagers would fall by the dozen following an attack. Some would even treat themselves, drenching weeping wounds with smears of honey. Something did not fit.

Her pace quickened.

Above her, starved corvids circled. Their protestant caws scratched the blank fog that fast became her shroud. Vapour wet her cheeks and froze the linings of her windpipe raw; a thermal curtain that left her blinded to the skeletonised mites and rotting foliage underfoot. Her feet were tricked by inconsistencies of rock versus decay. The ground gave way like a shot mattress. Agony swept from toe to knee in a flaming jolt and her face met the earth with a thud.

For a moment, blackness.

She roused to the same white-grey clag around her, thick as plumes from smothered bonfire. Her satchel lay open on the ground, the herbal concoctions spilling back into the earth to their source. She salvaged what she could and, on all fours, reached for the nearest bore to orient herself. Her eyes followed the trunk of an alder skyward where, just out of reach at half-mast, white fabric hung limp. She had not time nor the spring in her injured ankle to reach it. She hobbled onwards, hoodless, ears prickling in the sting of the air.

Light winds blew holes in the mist’s web and carried the hubbub of Monningsull. She traced the clank of metal, the whinnying and flutter of horse lip, the tumult of villager life to its heart.

A frantic yank at her skirt stole her attention.

“Please, miss…this way!”

Looking up at her was a young girl with white-gold plaits and mouth agape. Her round eyes were drawn to Sirona’s left cheek that throbbed mauve from impact. Her threads were damp and streaked with dirt, a Rorschach print of the forest floor. The girl took her hand and rushed her towards one of the shacks that shuddered with the anguished howls of a man who was clearly dying.

He writhed on the ground, splintered wood poking from his chest, the sear of poison coursing his organs. Sirona dropped to her knees at his side, scrambling for the bottle that had shattered minutes earlier in her clumsy misstep.

She forced the arrow’s point through his ribcage and flushed the torn flesh with water. All too quickly, his screams hushed: the bliss of unconsciousness, a promise of eternal sleep. In his struggle, his matted hair parted to reveal his face, prince-like and chiselled from a cool marble. A mason’s masterpiece. She had known from his cries alone but prayed it were not true. Her hands cradled his cheeks whose colour now crept across the stone.

Later, she would sign off her letter with a confession—With you, my world danced bright as wild flame—before stilling the beat of her heart with the tears of crushed foxglove.

Joy has no opposite— She is the purity of presence, A knowing, The thrill of aliveness. She is not chased or captured, But turns up unannounced, Like a long-loved-and-lost friend, Except, on closer inspection, With a flooding warmth, you realise That friend is you. She is that stilled gaze Holding you at arm’s length: Admiration, A sweet outbreath, An unwinding, Wind-thrown leaves coming to rest. She is not fickle like happiness Who hides in the curl of a smile Or in the fleeting flash of teeth. She is there, Behind life’s many filters and veils, Underneath ripples of mental noise, Aglow, Joy is always there.

When Viola was tasked with preparing a cash flow statement for one of Haines Watts' biggest clients, she breezed through the figures, unperturbed, in two February afternoons, which was most unusual. An account that size should normally take weeks. She'd never once muddled her numbers.

At least, not yet.

But when director, Darren, called her to his office, suddenly that tuna sandwich and third espresso at lunch didn't seem to sit quite right in her belly.

His office was a large glass box on the fourth floor. Her nostrils twitched as she entered. A synthetic waft of fresh paint and new upholstery greeted her. The door closed with a neat snick.

"Please, take a seat,” said a voice from behind the computer.

And she did, in the velvet-padded swivel chair, an awkward distance from his desk. Darren's fingers danced over the keyboard at impossible speed, signing off an email to payroll, she gathered, to process her final paycheck. She cursed her mind that hopped from one worst-case scenario to another. Already, she was wondering whether her Sainsbury's bag for life would manage to hold the contents of her drawers. And, heaven forbid, she musn’t forget her ceramic mug from the staff kitchen.

Darren's middle finger struck the Enter key with far too much zing for a Tuesday.

"You've been with us, what, seven years now, Viola?"

A slow nod.

"Firstly, regarding our latest client, Harrisons & Tate. The accounts you've been working on...they're flawless."

Her fumbling hands fell still in her lap.

"And not just that, you returned them in record time. I think it's time we started talking about the next steps for you."

And that’s how it started, Viola’s ascent to the fourth floor. From account executive to account manager to regional manager, she climbed the ranks, diffidence dissolving at each new rung. Her pay check doubled. Quadrupled. Eventually a partner, it became her choice how many noughts she added to her final figure.

Years blurred by, without regard, like the rush of green from the train window on her morning commute. Cursory joy hid in strange places: in the sip of Sancerre from her monthly wine subscription; coming home to a rickle of parcels on her doorstep after a weekly splurge; the finale of her favourite series, The Bridge. On her something-something birthday (an age she’d never voluntarily declare), she treated herself to a ritzy apartment way above the rug of smog that blanketed the city.

As she was unboxing her things, her hands met something which she recognised by shape alone. With warped handle, lovingly moulded by the potter’s clumsy hands, she raised the mug to the light. Her eyes brimmed with something bittersweet she couldn’t describe.

“What have I done?”

Her words were bare, the walls of the apartment repeating them back to her. She realised then, that the answer to this was in fact another question—the same question—in its negative.

Somewhere, in the flush of adolescence, her mind had latched onto an idea: that prosperity lay in reputation. Yet in her hands lay a symbol of her youth, a fired truth, and a connection to something far more beautiful.

Five decades earlier, in a town called Moshi, Northern Tanzania, a young girl and her father knelt in the rust-orange dirt around a square wooden slab. Onto it, he slapped a ball of clay. It was cool in the soft of her palms, staining them the same rich brown as the back of her hands, and warming under her touch. It could be moulded, this way and that, to make shapes, animals, people, and—with practice and patience—a mug.

The girl stared, unblinking. She’d created something from nothing, shaped by her own hands.

And then came the rains that turned the grounds golden.

Viola clutched the treasure to her breast. She felt something settle, a decision. Her homeland was calling, and this time she listened.

Who are you?

Look at you…that thick brushstroke of grease over your brow, trailing down the hook of your nose; those fat, rheumy lids that weep fluid after a night’s unrest; and—oh gosh—what is that? Pits. No, craters, plugged with half-popped grains of salt and cracked black peppercorns, bubbling from the dermis.

Squeeze one, go on.

I want to see the crud and dirt sprout and sprawled, like an earthworm from soggy ground. Oh, but what if it scars? I wouldn’t worry about that; those raised keratin starbursts scourging your cheeks will have a new friend to play with. Not that they’re lonely. They’ve been multiplying like a white mould recently—have you noticed?

You want me to shut up, don’t you, so you can hear yourself think? Have you only just realised? I am your thoughts. I am you: the shavings of dead skin over your scalp, the grime caught deep under your nails, that bad taste at the back of your throat, that loathing, bubbling in the pit of your stomach and the odious acid-froth sat on top like ocean spume.

It’s us. We’re one.

And let me tell you a secret, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve made a nest in the deepest recesses of your mind with tendrils barbed, somewhere deep in the catacombs of crypts and gyrae. You’re not scooping me out so easily…

But you don’t want to really, do you?

I’m your only friend.

Whenever James needed a moment to himself, he would always come back to this same place. Tonight the air was draughty, the faintest pinch of autumn stirring. He flipped up his hood and pulled on the drawstrings until only his nose poked through.

He listened.

The floorboards creaked underfoot and there was a tinkle of curious carp ruffling the skin of the lake. He drew esses in the water with his fingertips and watched the shoals dart away in zigzags. A familiar warmth rose in him, which tonight he needed.

Beyond the lake, the horizon caught fire, glowing, lambent. He knew this was her. And for the first time, he did not feel alone.

He would spend an hour or so here, savouring the last of the evening’s light, smiling to himself at the flicker of memories, and, before heading back to the house, he’d speak aloud the words he repeated every year.

“Happy birthday, sis.”