“You do not need him, not anymore. Go to the land I will show you.” Something crested ahead, contained within a quivering fleck, so similar to a raindrop on glass. In it, a sprawling meadow, rolling hills, sturdy oaks.
“Take me back,” I repeated, not knowing what it was I longed to go back to.
The scene melted, and the greens, browns, and yellows swirled to grey. To nothing.
“You are as the dust that coats the earth, absolute as fire’s fury, inevitable as a plague. Going back is fruitless, child. You must come. Now, step towards the light.”
A thin band of sun lanced through the emptiness, staking itself between where my eyes should have been. I could feel its heat.
“Come,” the voice whispered and shouted, vowels dragging but the consonants short.
“But I have no feet,” I realised, trying to wiggle toes that did not exist.
“Then crawl.”
“I have no legs.” I made to kneel, but all my bones were gone.
“Climb.”
“I haven’t any arms,” I sobbed, unable to swipe away the tears that rolled down a face that wasn’t there.
“Overwrought and useless,” it said, some of it soft and kind, parts of it harsh and stern. “You have no need of them. Now,come.”
“I cannot!”
The nothingness pulsed, the thump of a heartbeat smothered under a breast. The warmth swelled with it. “Youwillcome, eventually. You must.”
“Who am I?” I asked, an ache to know coursing through whatever was left of me. “What is my name? How did I come to be here?”
“I will wait,” they answered. “We will wait, though our patience is finite.”
“Take me back.”
“As you wish it.”
The warmth ebbed, and first to return were my fingers, returning one flake of skin at a time. Then came my hips, waist, elbows, each part of me stitching together as if they were never parted. With my body, so too came my memories, swarming and layering atop one another, broken and bleeding, congealing into a single great mass.
Needles and whips. Pyres and trees. Iron and curls.
Sifting through them, I tried to pull one free from the wreckage, but I was blinded. My new eyes smothered by a thickening smog, plumes upon plumes rising until nought was left but the grey. I sputtered, lungs singing with acrid fumes. Alone in the smoke, alone in the ashes, I lay atop the pile of memories and sank into their jagged edges. They poked at my ribs like knives.
Dreaming, dead, awake, whatever I was, I managed to lift a hand to my chest, counting the boons within.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The smoke eventually cleared, and as it did, the edges digging into my sides grew rounder, plumper, as the char of ash shiftedinto the scent of metal and parchment. It was undercut with something almost floral. Patchouli, perhaps? Jasmine? I inhaled deeply, recognising it from one of the many flowers Mother and I had planted in our courtyard.
Mother.
I could practically see her, elbows deep in soil, dark hair fighting to escape her bun in loose, wild curls. It was a familiar smell, a soft, addictive smell—a smell that reminded me of home. My eyes opened, and I was anywhere but.
Vision adjusting, the only light came from the glow of a fire, flickering somewhere near the foot of the bed I was prostrated upon. I pulled at my wrists, the cool bite of metal digging into my flesh. Grunting with the effort, I grasped at the bonds and hauled myself upright. The tension bit deeper, my shackles linked by chains and clasped to the posts on either side of my head.
Carved from redwood, the colossus of a bed sat squarely in the middle of a vast chamber, its canopy above embossed with an olive tree, dripping in blood. I gasped as other memories gushed back in a single, mighty swell, pulling me under.
A tree. The needle. Falstaff. My blood. Tremors, ash, and tumbling rock… Demetri.
A sob bubbled from my chest, from the same place where that strange warmth had bloomed under the Blood Tree. I drew my knees towards it, unable to hold them close.
