He brought the axe down, harder this time. 

“Careful,” Brett said. “You don’t wanna hurt yourself.”

The log split. They were out in the rough, just inside the edge of the woods. You couldn’t see the house from here, just the gentle plume of heat rising from its chimney. Jesse was wearing two pairs of pants and a wool sweater under his jacket, but the morning cold still crept in. They were in the final stretch now, a half-gasp away from spring but still covered in February snows. Four months since the call. CT scans, IV drips. A phantom in the blood, a second winter alongside the other. 

Jesse turned one of the halves of the log. The axe went down again. He missed, the bit landing just an inch to the right. Brett sipped a protein shake out of a small plastic bottle. It was getting harder for him to keep solid food down. His arm moved haltingly, his mouth careful to meet the lid. Jesse didn’t like these moments, accidentally bearing witness to his father’s slowed, shaky movements. They were becoming more frequent.

“You missed the game last night,” Jesse said.

“I know,” Brett said. “I fell asleep in the chair.”

The trees seemed to swallow up their voices. You could whisper a secret into one of their hollows and they would keep it. Brett leaned his head back against one of the trees, his eyes continually moving over to a snowless stretch some ten feet away. Splayed white legs, four mud-ringed hooves. A long stomach rising gently in chemical-induced sleep.

“Bad ref call, I didn’t really get it,” Jesse said, looking down at the twisting lines in the log, the pressed insides. He was practicing. Warming up. “They’re gonna lose the conference.”

Brett’s teeth were starting to audibly chatter, and his thinning face was pink from the cold. He was too sick to be out here for long, Jesse thought. He should have just gone back to the house.

“If you move your thumb a little,” Brett said, “you’ll have a better grip.”

Jesse knew this, but he let the man have his parental offerings. He had been chopping wood all winter for the fireplace in the living room. They didn’t need the heat, the fires were almost purely for ambiance, but he found comfort in the chopping. Jesse could tell his mom and dad liked the fires. Brett and Annie would sit on the couch in the half-dark, quietly watching the flickering coals. The axe started feeling lighter in Jesse’s hands. Winter continued, trips to the clinic occurred with horrible frequency. Brett spent more time in the quiet of the bathroom, door closed. Envelopes from the clinic and the insurance company gathered by the bread box in the kitchen. 

They caught it by accident, or so Brett said. A pearl-white coat, a silky mane and tail. How could you catch one by accident? How could you catch a cure by chance? Jesse had so many questions he didn’t ask. If his dad was right, it would solve everything. Jesse didn’t know how it could solve the heavy feeling settling in him, the sense that he would never escape the forest, the fields, the fear, feeling like a burden to everyone around him, a burden to love, how it could ever split him from the anticipation of grief like an axe on wood, but he said nothing. Brett had trapped the thing three days ago with unknown lures, and it had been neighing mournfully in the barn ever since, as if it knew its fate.

Jesse brought the axe down, finally hitting the mark. Brett stepped close.

“That’s enough,” Brett said. “You’re good.”

Jesse fetched the split pieces of wood, setting them aside. He turned; his dad approached the sleeping creature, gingerly crouching down and, with a light grunt, shifting the head for ease of access. He coursed his hand along the base of the silver-gray horn, that limb of bone the length of Jesse’s forearm, the marrow within strong enough to break a plague. Brett pushed away the ribbons of mane hair coursing between pointed ears and down over the broad brow. The path was clean.

“It might take a couple tries,” Brett said. 

Jesse looked down over the creature, then back at the axe. “Do you think it’ll work?”

Brett rose to his feet, looking pained even with that slight movement. “What do you mean?” 

Jesse nodded down. He was afraid to look at it too long. How was it real? If it was real, what else could be true? Brett came over.

“Here,” he said quietly, reaching weakly to the axe. “I can—”

“No,” Jesse said, pulling. “It’s okay, I can do it.” 

“It’s going to be fine,” Brett added. “When it wakes up, it’ll be just like any old horse.”

Jesse walked over to the sleeping form. He positioned himself over the head, taking account for the length of his arm and distance from the ground. He could feel Brett’s eyes on him. One swing. It would take just one swing. He would make it so. The color of the creature’s coat reminded him of the envelopes in the kitchen, all the envelopes, a creature made of envelopes, a creature made of threats, a sea of threats, drowning in threats—

He noticed the creature’s nostrils flaring, innocent breath wheezing out. Gentle intervals. The quiet pulse beneath all things.

He raised up the axe, feeling his arm muscles tense. The metal caught a glint of winter light in its rise. 

He was sixteen.

***

Jeremiah Moriarty is a queer writer from Minneapolis. His poems and stories have appeared in The Rumpus, Puerto del Sol, No Tokens, Catapult, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Additionally, his writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize, and Best of the Net. He is @horse_updates on Instagram, Bluesky, and X.