‘The Promise’ by Jaclyn Morken

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From Pulp Literature Issue 50, journey through the aftermath of the Shift in this excerpt of ‘The Promise’ by Jaclyn Morken. Want to know what happens next? Be sure to read the rest of this story in Issue 50, Spring 2026!

The Promise

by Jaclyn Morken

Left. Stutter. Rock. Clap.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the words curl around each other, calcify into stone. I bury that stone next to my heart, mentally trace over the words again. I watch the steady rise and fall of Deve’s little chest, and the stone aches in my own.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

The grass flutters my shadow, a sneer in the wind’s whispers, its mimicry a mockery.

“Shut it,” I hiss. The tightness in my throat has been growing for many days now.

Deve is asleep, his chubby thumb dangling from his slack lips. I wipe a line of drool from his achingly small chin with the rag I made from my old shirt. I clench the trembling fabric — or am I the one trembling?

I will make it. I have to.

The breeze chuckles through the leaves above.

Deve giggles whenever birds fly overhead, strains against the fabric I use to sling us together every morning, to flap his arms along with them. Today, he stretches towards a pair of starlings as they disappear into a high cavity in a dying tree. (Populus tremuloides: Trembling aspen. Bitter. Bark: pain and fever relief, antiseptic.)

I follow the birds with my eyes. Their roost hides in the tree’s tangled leaves, their chirruping muted. I squint skyward: nothing circles above.

Deve whines, points to where the birds vanished. My chest is heavy.

“I know,” I say, hefting him higher on my chest, my pack rattling too lightly on my shoulders. He quiets as I rub his back, his knit cap tickling my neck as he nestles closer. “You’ll see more birds soon.”

Read the rest of this story in Pulp Literature Issue 50, Spring 2026!

The 2026 Kingfisher Poetry Prize is now open! Find all the details, and enter, here.

Jaclyn Morken is a science fiction and fantasy writer from Saskatchewan. ‘The Promise’ forms part of her in-progress dystopian fiction collection, Inter(n)ment. She is grateful to the Independent Artists grant program from SK Arts for funding her work on this collection — and for giving her the chance to explore what hope looks like in the darkest of places.