You could let the train pass. Switch off your greenlighter, become unrecognisable, and let the train defences fire.

Would you even feel the guns?

The shudder now comes to the ground, as if it were a sound, shakes Branner’s mind minutely; rattles, his mind inside its hood, clattering, the rain.

‘Take the shot,’ the sergeant orders, bluntly in the comms.

If you die first, then she can die in peace.

A great noise. Then you would be gone.

Reaching now, to try to hear. To ask her what to do.

The red dot on the darkening undergrowth in the mid-scope of his rifle, the rain a veil sheeting off his hood.

How a glow comes through the opaque pod around her bed. As if she is a source of light.

‘Branner.’ Urgent now, the sergeant’s voice.

Just switch off your greenlighter. That’s all it would take.

The air seeming to shatter ahead of the oncoming force.

Dry mouth. Possibility. Brief Armageddon of the guns.

A tensile sing come to the rails.

But. Without you she is gone.

Hit. Hood. The rain. The train. Pools gathered round him where he’s knelt to take the shot. Ten million gallons of water, two hundred miles an hour.

‘. . . seconds,’ lost in thickening noise. The bullet’s path, a dream burst into flame and char. The train some crashing wave.

The rifle calculates for distance, calculates for force.

The old scar tacks against the soft nap of his hood.

Tell me.

Tell me, Anne.

They should not be here. In this place. Deer, dog, or man.

Pull the trigger, John.

Stay living.

Keep my voice alive.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to David Goddard of the British Dragonfly Society. Scarce Chasers generally first emerge in May, and the story had to be ready before this. There was little chance I’d find an exuvia myself. Mr Goddard went into his attic and found me a specimen.

Thanks, of course, to BBC Radio for inviting me to write these stories, to Granta for their continued belief, and to Catapult in the U.S. Thanks also to Ch and N. The way to know the future is to step towards it.

About the Author

© Bernadine Jones

Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales, where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry; Everything I Found on the Beach; Bird, Blood, Snow; The Dig; and Cove. He has won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize, and the BBC National Short Story Award. His short fiction has been widely published in anthologies and publications, including Granta and The New Yorker.