One March afternoon in 1969 I was on the deck of a Chinese junk listening to the water clop against the wooden hull and enjoying a breeze that blew toward the South China Sea. The junk bobbed ... [+]
J.M. Eno is a writer of fiction and poetry, whose work has appeared in L’Esprit Literary Review, House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, and various anthologies. He can be found among the trees with his family and a recalcitrant English bulldog, on Twitter at @jmenowrites, or at jmenowrites.com "Some Meat on Those Bones" is in Short Circuit #14, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Terrydale was a hamlet much too small to be located on any map, and so war came to it as it comes to such places—not through the trampling of armies over its quaint town square, or the burning of its sole two-story building (a granary), or the pillaging of the shops run by its unassuming residents, but through the conscription of its sons.
Three were chosen for the service of the king: the miller's son, the blacksmith's son, and the widow Margery's son.
On the day they were to depart, the widow Margery helped her son to pack his bag. There, in the corner of his room, was his old doll