Branches Mud and Stones
by Mac Bowers
After her baby died, Emma made a new one out of branches, mud and stones that had washed ashore. Ocean water cut through her jeans as she bound together a skeleton. Packed sinew and muscle and fat together. Traced ten fingers and ten toes. She spent the most time on the face, carving a button nose, a cupid’s bow of a mouth, feather eyebrows. The tide was up to her waist by the time she was done, and the baby parted sandy eyes to blink at her. Emma scooped the baby up, told her shhh shhh like the sea when she squirmed and bits of her trickled between Emma’s fingers.
She left a trail of sand behind her as she walked home, and when she went through the front door, Emma’s husband fell to his knees. He kissed Emma’s stomach. Kissed the baby. Whispered, our baby oh God it’s our baby, as the baby watched on. He stood, hugged Emma close to his chest and, pressed between Emma and her husband, the baby smiled.
Emma and her husband were dedicated to caring for the baby better than they’d cared for the first one. They held her close when her voice scratched out something that could have been a cry. Emma was sure to pat chunks of sand back into place when a shoulder or foot or hip cracked and broke off. When the baby was hungry, Emma’s husband went fishing and Emma fed her his catch, raw and wriggling.
The baby grew fat and happy until the moment Emma’s husband blinked at her, his vision cleared, and he told Emma, This isn’t our baby. Emma frowned. The baby scraped a noise from its throat. Of course this is our baby, Emma said. I made her. Which was fair enough.
It’s not, Emma’s husband said. I’ll prove it.
Emma followed him as he carried the baby down to the beach. He walked into the ocean, knelt with the water up to his chest. The grains of sand that made up the baby flowed through his fingers. And then the baby reached up, grabbed fistfuls of his hair, and pulled him down into the water.
The baby held and held until Emma’s husband stopped squirming, even as the tide pulled her apart. Emma watched as the baby disappeared and her husband was swept out to sea. When they were gone, she dropped to her knees and built new ones out of branches, mud and stones.
Mac Bowers recently returned to Pennsylvania after spending a year gallivanting across Scotland as she earned her Masters in Creative Writing. She enjoys writing weird stories, playing rugby, and sipping on endless cups of coffee. Other works of hers can be found in F(r)iction and The Lindenwood Review, among others.