Winter Rose Quotes

“I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that’ll soon be gathering. There’s no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us.

I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I’m locked up and hard as stone.

“I’m sorry, Mamma,” I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There’s no life there anymore.

So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain.

I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice.”
― Rachel A. Marks, Winter Rose

“The men stop coming after Hunt goes missing. We learned from the last brave soul to visit that they whispered all sorts of stories to answer his disappearance. My favorite is that we ate him. We cooked him up with our whore-earned corn, a dozen rats’ eyes, and a bat wing.

Even I couldn’t have thought of anything more perfect.”
― Rachel A. Marks, Winter Rose