First published in Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine: https://www.fatalflawlit.com/fiction-pieces/mahutland
Very few Mahuts turned up at my husband Bora’s funeral. Six—I counted them, including the funeral officiant who’s also the head priest of our locality. I was pacing in the empty graveyard, occasionally glancing back at my mother-in-law whose figure lumbered along, partly due to the fat she’d amassed all these years, partly because she was sad at the death of her beloved son. I watched the tense twitching of her whiskers, several of which had turned white, and her greying tail that twitched involuntarily. Her cold gaze carried with it a sense of bitterness.
Master Idi performed the ritual while I stood silently. My mother-in-law squinted at me between sobbing bouts. When a thin strand of grass was placed on the mound of earth over Bora’s grave—the sign of a believer in Aruh, our Supreme Lord—I thought of Master Praavu, … Read more “Mahutland”