… when she kneeled at the altar, we saw blood fall, not blood I whispered not blood at all, but purple blackberries, bouncing fat on the stone

When Brigid, we don’t know her name, I called her that for the Saint, when she came to the chapel in the yew woods near our house, John’s and mine, when she kneeled at the altar, we saw blood fall, not blood I whispered not blood at all, but purple blackberries, bouncing fat on the stone. I hid alone in the smell of old wax behind a pew but John stood and she said, ‘Oh. Who are you?’

‘I’m John,’ he said, and hauled me up by my scruff as I howled. ‘This wolf cub is Abe.’

‘Hello John. Hello, Abe.’

‘Hello,’ I said. I scowled, miffed, as John said, ‘Who are you?’

‘Nobody,’ she said and tilted her head.

I sniffed and I said, ‘Saint Brigid.’

‘That’s fine.’ She stood, popped a berry barefoot, stained white marble red like communion wine over snow. ‘It suits.’

‘You bleed fruit,’ I said. It was sullen, I know, but I was ten, only ten, when this happened.

John, older, more bred, more cultured, said, ‘It’s not polite to, uh,’ and that was the end, cause we knew I’d been rude, but nobody knew why.

‘The blackberries,’ said Brigid, ‘answered my prayer.’ She uncovered her thigh, and showed us a ring, a steel bramble sat high, deep in her skin. A berry oozed free of the weal and I winced, but she said, ‘I grew up with pain. Seemed pointless. No gain for anyone, not me and not Him,’ pointing straight at the Son, bleeding there on his cross. ‘I asked for a balm. Convinced I had nothing to lose. Thought He’d take it away. Make me forget.’

‘So it stayed? It’s not done?’

She nodded. ‘But now there’s a point, and I’m glad. When I bleed, I can eat. I can feed everyone.’

‘A miracle,’ said John, but I only felt sad.

Poor Brigid, I thought. Now she can’t heal. She can’t save herself. She has to feel pain. Made her own crown of thorns, and it came.

***

Alice M.’s short fiction has appeared in Salt‘s Best British Short Stories, and a few literary journals, including hex. Ae are a fiction editor at X-R-A-Y, and have a novella coming from Jillian Luft’s Sweet Trash Press, an imprint of House of Vlad, in 2026. Find Alice on substack, insta, bluesky, or the wasteland which used to be twitter, all @notveryalice