"Her Winter Song" by Anna Vaught

A spooky story set in a village full of rustics under a White Horse hill.

This tiny novella, little more than a short story, 

A Cambridge academic heads to a village in chalk-hilled Wiltshire, where another don, now missing, has recently been doing archaeology. He meets 'the Man' who issues a mysterious warning and describes how he was seduced by the Woman. There are the usual cryptic comments from the yokels in the pub, there is a drink of strange spiced wine, and there is sex both on the hill and in a church whose font is strangely carved. It is the celebration of the 'old' winter solstice symbolising death and rebirth, and there are monsters.

Very Wicker Man but told in a luxuriously lyrical style, full of a Victorian ghost-story vibe but saved from melodrama by some delightful modern touches (eg the Man fits kitchen: "there was a particular fashion for cupboards with many shelves and built-in racks").

Selected quotes:

• "If you hear the strike of the farrier's hammer and remember that there are none in the village, or the blacksmith striking his anvil, when none have lived here for years, leave here quickly. And if you hear hoof taps but see no horse striding towards you ... I am sorry for your loss; it is too late, and you must stay here with me in this perpetual dusk." 
• "I found the instability alluring"
• "As the winter solstice tells us of nights shortening and days lengthening, what we pray for is darkness. Rich aphotic pools of it."

November 2024; 58 pages

Published by Renard Press

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God