Unholy Trinity: Firs by Emma K. Leadley

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Introduction

I love playing with words, and homonyms—words that sounds the same but have different meanings —seemed ideal for a linked trio of stories. The first challenge was to find a set of three that fired my imagination but when I came across firs/furs/furze (another word for gorse), three ideas immediately sprung to mind.

Firs

The tall trees, forbidding in their dense, dark foliage, form a close-knit forest. It’s the perfect place for small animals to nest, breed and burrow, safe from larger predators. But there are no living creatures here. Instead, death stalks by way of noiseless shadow, a dank presence drifting and creeping between the trunks, extinguishing the life of everything it touches. Everything except the firs; they protect each other. A graveyard of axes lines the forest perimeter, a warning to those who dare venture. They don’t last long and peace is restored whilst death creeps, the forest swaying in the breeze.

Furs

The forest guardian had lived in the woods for many years and knew and respected the land. And the land loved him back. He understood tree growth, rainfall, when the berries ripen and mushrooms sprout. He wore a coat of wolf-fur, skinned from an animal that died a natural death, while the pack watched. But, other humans weren’t as forgiving and kind as the guardian. They wanted to cut down the trees, build, ravage the land. When the wolves found the guardian, axe sticking out the fur on his back, neck severed, they sought revenge. It was bloody and merciless.

Furze

“Beware of the furze,” people said. Or, “watch out for the gorse. It’ll prick you.” But no-one talked of the missing and the lost. Those who the furze stripped of muscle and sinew, eyeballs and skin. Teeth and bones broken down to provide every last morsel of nourishment. Human or animal, it mattered not. The homeless woman who crawled into a safe space in the bushes. No-one missed her. The sheep who wandered too far in the moors and the nearby hiker who misread the map. The holiday-making child presumed swept out to sea. Oh yes, beware the furze alright.