There’s a sparrow lying on the crust of the snow, beak open, one wing folded. George watches it from a wary distance, gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering, hands shoved tightly up under his armpits. There’s something strangely perfect about it, no blood or scattered feathers. But nothing living could be that still. It looks like someone’s glove, dropped and forgotten. It must have died recently, to be left bare like that.

The snow was still falling when George went to bed last night. He left the curtains open to watch. The snowflakes were made orange by streetlamp light, sliding past the glass in hypnotic, patterned flurries.

This morning the snow is no longer alive, but still, as still and dead as the bird. Unsettled, George looks away, up at the house. This is a curtain-twitching kind of street in a curtain-twitching kind of village, but the windows are dark and empty.

Come on, he thinks. Come on. Open the door.Keep reading“The Stranding – Maud Woolf”