Under the Skin by T.R. Steele
1000 words, ~4 minutes reading time
Issue 8, Summer 2025
She sews her brother into his clothes.
She’s been at it for months, throughout his changes. She adjusts the shoulders to fit squarely on his frame, broadens the waist and thighs of his breeches. She doesn’t need to widen the necklines, however, as he has no antlers. His slender muzzle can slip right through, the fabric settling at the base of his long neck without issue.
It is never his head that tears through the clothes anyway; no, it is his sharp, hoof-like hands that shred cloth, or his broadened shoulders that stretch the seams. He is useless with a needle now, given the state of his hands. Their father never learned to do anything except darn socks, but he’s been gone since the season turned away from winter and into pale warmth, and their mother—well, their mother is beyond help or helping alike.
“I’m sorry,” he says, ducking his head as he enters the darkening room. Even without antlers, he’s tall, even taller than before. “But my vest tore at the seams again.”
His sister looks up from her work as he sits across from her at the oak table and sighs, but she’s smiling. “Give it here,” she says. “I’ll get to it once I’m through with the rest.”
She’s got a pile of her own clothes beside her. Based on how he changed, she can estimate what size she’ll be when her time comes. How long she’ll have with her altered clothes, she isn’t sure, but at least this way she can avoid ripped bodices and ruined sleeves, until her hands, too, begin to change. She finds the hooves beautiful, she really does; glossy, elegant, and sharp. But she looks away from his hands as often as not.
Her brother has been to town and back to get more fabric, needles, thread; people still stare, but not as much as they used to. It helps, she thinks, that their father is gone now, too, and doesn’t appear to be returning anytime soon. No one believes he can track their mother down, but they’ll never admit it; the belief stays behind their eyes. The pity shines through, however. She’s seen it, the few times she’s followed her brother into town. They feel for the whole family, they truly do. But pity can only put a pause on so much unease before something starts stirring under the skin again.
And she and her brother know a lot about stirrings under the skin.
“I’ve been out in the woods again,” he admits. He’s looking at the table, his dark, long-lashed eyes tracing the grain of the wood.
She flinches but tries to hide it, making an exaggerated gesture as if she pricked her finger with her needle. “Are the trilliums in bloom yet?” she asks, once her heart slows.
He shakes his head. “No, but the trees are recovering. You know, the ones that were stripped the worse? I think… I think the…”
He trails off. She knows what he was going to say: I think the herd has moved on. The winter was harsh; they resorted to eating bark, revealing the stark yellow-gold of the sapwood beneath it. She had refused to allow herself the thought that somewhere out there, her mother was starving, while they were in here, warm, fed, and waiting to join her.
She sets her sewing down. “I know,” she says. “They’re gone. Back to the old woods, probably.”
“The old woods,” he murmurs. He uses a cloven hand to trace a whorl in the tabletop. The gesture leaves scratches on the surface.
She watches him carefully.
“I can hear it, sometimes, when I’m out in our woods,” he continues. His voice is soft. The only other sound is her breathing. “The wind through their fur. Their breath on the wind. The sound of their eyelashes, with each blink.” He lifts his gaze, looks out the window, out into the oppressive green, closing in on them as spring crawls in. “It’s as if I’m already there.”
She lowers her eyes. Breathes in, then out. Her hands itch to pick up the mending again, to sew him back into his vest, to close up the wound that is their inevitable goodbye.
“When you go,” she says, looking back at him, at all of him: at the black velvet of his nose, at the nubs on his skull where his antlers will grow. She can see their mother’s features ghosting over his own, even now. “I won’t be long after you. I’ll follow you. I’ll find you. I promise, I will.”
“Will you?”
She doesn’t answer. Not yet. He’s still tense, alert, gazing out the window as she stands and banks the fire. He will get up soon, she knows, duck his head, step outside. He’ll sleep in the byre again tonight, his bed now useless, too small and awkward for his new body. He’ll sleep in the hay meant for the horse their father took with him on his second hunt for their mother. She wonders, as the fire dims, what would have happened if he had not caught her that first time. Would they have been born in the woods instead, twin fawns, never once knowing what it was like to slip out of one skin and into another?
“I followed you out of the womb,” she says. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”
The next morning, a thin frost covers the ground, and her brother is gone.
She takes his torn vest to the porch and sews and sews and sews. The slots of deer tracks that trail from the door to the woods beyond melt with the rising sun. She blinks her long-lashed eyes and takes a deep breath of cold, green air. If she listens carefully, she realizes, she can hear the whisper of hooves cutting through the undergrowth.
Not long now, she thinks, and returns to her work.
