The Pryor's Garden

​Prior Giuseppe stood by a narrow window in the three-spired gothic priory and gazed at the graveyard below. His eyes were rheumy with age, but he could see the late afternoon sun burnish the tombstones and bathe the village windows in a golden glow as if they were lit from within. The mist that always swirled around the grounds obscured the pathway through the graveyard with its frigid blanket.
Giuseppe pulled his cowl over his head and shivered. Damp seeped through the priory’s brick walls and emanated from its stone floors. His bones were always cold these days. He shook back his sleeve and looked at the nearly translucent skin of his arm, sinewed and scarred from decades of tending his garden. His fingers were knotty and bent with arthritis. Before too many more full moons, he too would be planted in the graveyard.
His garden grew well this year. Last fall, he had painstakingly exhumed bones of saints from the crypt beneath the chapel and crushed them. He sowed them under the first new moon in spring, watered them, and weeded them until they sprouted. Skeletal arms and hands speared up in rows among the tombstones. They were nearly ripe. In three days, the Hunter Moon would rise, cold and white, and his crop would be ready to harvest. Sweet, crunchy saints’ fingers. Giuseppe’s mouth watered.
Raucous ravens cawed overhead. Circling, calling others to join. They, too, liked saints’ fingers. Giuseppe hitched up his robes and hurried down the stone steps into the graveyard. He picked up his rake and swung it overhead like a gaunt scarecrow shouting at the birds. “I’ll plant you next! These are mine! Stay away!”
As dusk settled, he walked among the rows of saints’ fingers chanting softly.
On the morning of the Hunter Moon, Giuseppe rose just before dawn. He brewed a pot of femur tea, then sat to eat his breakfast of toast and pâté made from the livers of supplicants. While he ate, he thought about the crop he would harvest as the moon rose.
At nightfall, Giuseppe gathered his trowel and basket. His steps were quick on the path. He breathed in the damp, earthy scent. The air was still, silent. Ravens perched along the graveyard fence and watched, waiting. With practiced movements, Giuseppe picked up his trowel and knelt beside the first skeletal arm. The brittle saints’ fingers rattled. The hair on Giuseppe’s arms stood straight and he paused to listen. A soft slither whispered from the earth. Roots stretched, then tendrilled to grasp his ankles and circle up his legs. Bony hands reached to pull him to the ground. “No!” his cry was muffled by the soil filling his throat. As Giuseppe drew his last ragged breath, the forearms of the saints’ fingers creaked and bent. Fingers pushed earth over his body and patted it smooth.
The ravens swooped down to enjoy the harvest.