cross-limb

Updated: June 29, 2025

A wind came up from the desert and blew across the cañon’s rocky walls into the valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it. She had been expecting this thing. For weeks the image of it had been graven on her heart. Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his dangling body from the cross-limb.

Marie Manning - Judith of the Plains

The black, dead trees stood out distinctly against the starry sky, and from a cross-limb of one of them dangled something with head awry, like a broken jumping-jack, something that had once been a man—and her husband. She could touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its human warmth.

Marie Manning - Judith of the Plains