The Scene Near Arles-sur-Tech
In July’s third, free to read and share, story, Fawaz Al-Matrouk unfolds a story about what is true and what is not. ~ Julian and Fran, July 20, 2025
It’s our fourth July bringing you four great, free, Sunday Morning short stories! Yes: a whole month of free goodness from The Sunday Morning Transport — by Vajra Chandrasekera, John Wiswell, Fawaz Al-Matrouk, and Izzy Wasserstein. We hope you love these and all our stories as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays.
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The Scene Near Arles-sur-Tech
by Fawaz Al-Matrouk
The object in the black velvet case was unlike any she had seen in her eighteen years of life.
Maybe he is true.
The thought of it frightened her. She looked into his black eyes in the firelight. That dark complexion and white beard had made her doubt him from the beginning, the stranger from across the Pyrenees, who found her in the woods outside her village and told her strange tales of other times and places. But something had drawn her to him. That light in his eyes, which was there again now, which seemed to speak directly into her soul.
If he was true, had she betrayed a good man? She had no room for doubt. They would come at any moment. She had only to wait, and it would be over.
Where were they?
She looked at the object to bide her time. It was a cylinder, perfectly smooth, its surface as pure as the purest glass she had ever seen, purer than the windows of the Abbey at Arles-sur-Tech. She could see through it to a green liquid with a gentle glow. At the top of the cylinder was a needle, sharper than an awl, sharper than anything she had ever known.
She knew there were wonders of invention across the Pyrenees, in the land of Heathens and Mohammedans. Could this be an object of invention from the Devil himself? Or did the man truly come, as he said, from a land and time farther than the farthest ocean?
He introduced himself as Abraham, when they first met. Ali ibn Ibrahim, he later said. He found her by the river in the woods at night. He seemed to read her mind, to know she was about to dive into oblivion, to end her suffering in moonlit waves. He spoke to her gently. He told her that there was purpose to her life, that he had been looking for her, that she held unimaginable powers.
She thought, at first, that he wanted what every old man had wanted in her life, a moment of pleasure in her body, a laughter at her pain. It was her fault, her mother said. You are the witch at the source of your own suffering. You have to hide your beauty. You have to take a man who will be your armor against the others.
Nothing she did was enough. She could not hide from her suffering. She came to the river to end it that night. But she had to be cautious with the stranger in the woods, his dark complexion and white beard. She could not dive into the waters without him diving after her. And so she listened.
Then that light in his eyes spoke to her.
She came to him often in that hovel in the woods. She sat by the fire and listened to his stories of faraway times and places. There were wonders grander than the Abbey at Arles-sur-Tech. Grander than existed in any of the cities of the world. He spoke to her of moving through air like the birds, of walking through the moon and stars, of dissolving into light.
There is a piece of the divine in us, he said. The ancient books have it right, but none of their words can lead us there. I can lead us there. But I needed you. I lost you in another time and place. I knew where to find you, but not when, and so I searched through the ages. And here you are. It’s unmistakable. I see it in your eyes. Do you see it in mine, Renée?
She did see it. But it frightened her.
Was this the voice of God or the Devil? How could you tell between the two? Both of them promise wonders. One of them leads to Hell.
She had seen a woman burned at the stake. She had seen the flesh of her arms melt like lamb off the bone. She had heard the woman scream, had felt the scream in her own body, moving through her, searching for a place to hide, lest the suffering of her flesh were to release it into the wind.
She would never let herself burn at the stake. She would never consort with the Devil. And so she went to the good men of the Abbey at Arles-sur-Tech. She told them about Abraham and the ritual he proposed, the ritual of transcendence. They confirmed to her the mark of the Devil.
Where were they now?
She had to bide her time. Soon they would come, and this would be over.
Abraham took the object from the box and put it into her hand. “You have to pierce the skin of your veins with the needle tip, then press the back of it here. When the liquid enters your blood, you will be transported, and you will know what I know.”
“What will I know?” she asked.
“I cannot tell you this in words; they do not hold the width of the experience. You have to see for yourself.”
“But it frightens me,” she said, to bide her time. “I can’t go when I’m frightened.”
Where were they?
“I will try,” he said, “to put this into words, but none of my words will answer you. At some point, you have to travel through the fear. When you pierce the skin, the liquid melts your awareness so that you can see more than what is around you here, you can see the truth at the heart of the universe, your mind will be a space that you can enter like a church, you will come to know the piece of you that is divine. That is more than I can say in words. All I can do is open the door.”
He held her hand and the object in it. “This is the key.”
When he let go, she saw the light in his eyes, and she doubted.
What if he is true?
They had not arrived, the men of the abbey. She had bided her time as best she could. There was nothing left but to pierce herself. And she wondered at the truth. She wanted to know.
What if they came in during her transformation? She had done what she could. She had delivered the Devil to them. They would spare her the flames. They had only themselves to blame. She had bided her time.
Where were they?
She asked herself as she pierced the skin of her veins and pressed the liquid into her.
Into her blood.
Into her mind.
Light.
Green swirls of light.
A smile.
Abraham.
Abraham is the smile.
A being of light.
She is a being of light.
She is a star.
Her village is a star.
Her home.
There are stars everywhere.
Swirling in green light.
Her body floats.
It floats through the stars.
And Abraham is the smile.
Abraham holds her hand.
You’re here, he says.
I’m here, she says. I’ve missed you.
I found you, he says.
And he lets go.
She knows her place.
She sees her place in the universe.
She sees the journey ahead.
To love him as a daughter.
To write the words together.
The words that could lead the world.
That could lead us into light.
Beyond the walls of religion.
The sky is one.
Beyond the walls.
The sky is one.
We are the sky.
We are the light.
Her village again.
Her village below.
She falls into her village. She falls into the hovel. She falls into the open eyes and the body receiving her.
She feels the air on her skin.
She stands triumphant, alive in the expanse of her being.
She can hardly believe it. She opens her eyes to witness the celebration.
The room is dark. The firelight flickers. At her feet is a pool of red. It stretches in every direction like the waters of a river. And the source of the river is the face of a man. His eyes wide, his mouth wide, his face frozen in a scream. His body broken and flowing in the river of red. She recognizes Abraham.
Around her in the shadows are the men of the abbey. All around her. The holy men. There is blood on their hands. They stare at her body. She knows the look in their eyes.
The scream finds its way out, through her heart, through her mouth, into the echoes of the wind.
She hears the scream. The scream of the woman burning at the stake. The scream that is neither hers nor hers. The scream of the stars in the face of man.
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This was the scene near Arles-sur-Tech. It was written as a sentence by a holy man in the scriptorium of the abbey, on a parchment that used to hold the Poetics of Aristotle, carefully scraped to write a collection of warnings about witches and sorcerers that has not survived in its entirety. This one sentence remains among others, about the village woman Renée who bewitched and killed a foreigner named Abraham.
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Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Fawaz Al-Matrouk was born in Kuwait and grew up in Canada. He is a filmmaker by trade, and his short films have played in festivals worldwide, winning awards for writing, directing, and audience choice. He is an alumnus of Clarion West 2021, and his stories have been published in Nature and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His story “The Voice of a Thousand Years” was an Ignyte Awards finalist in 2023, and selected for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume 4 (ed. Paula Guran) and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume 1 (ed. Stephen Kotowych). His work explores our power to confront the unknown, throughout history and into the future.
“The Scene Near Arles-sur-Tech,” © Fawaz Al-Matrouk, 2025.
The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!
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