As we ran I reached my magic deep into the soil, where dead roots dream of earthworm kisses. With a whiplike crack of my magic I demanded their stories. I command them to tell me what it is they tempted me with all night, tripping me as I walked down the marketplace, filling the air with doom and dread.
And I learn: the maze wasn’t always made of corn.
It was once a hedge maze, with walls as tall as the court proper. There was magic in its veins- there were talking statues, and strange lights, and a queen who turned the flowers to daggers. Our mother. I cleaved my mind; half of it was demanding more and more of the earth, the other was running deeper into the maze, hot on sister’s silver heels.
I felt like a criminal sometimes, a little robber girl. Mostly I felt it was my right. To stealing stories like a god. To command the dead and deathless.
“What happened here” is the question I pound into the earth. Until it tells me.
“Someone died here,” I gasped. “Mama was there--”
And then we heard the scream, and my magic faded into the night sky. In the eery silence that followed (the silence no one else heard, because they could not hear its opposite), Avesta and I met eyes..
Oh, I love that raging sea look in my sister’s eyes. I loved it then, and I love it now. I would move worlds for that wild-magic gleam, if I could. And I hated that I couldn’t. It was maybe the only thing in the whole entire world that I hated. So I bit my lip and I nodded and I kept my hate close to my heart, so close maybe sister would not see it was there. We knew each other in, out, upside down, but I was clever and private and could keep a secret, even from her, if I put my mind to it--
right?
She wasn’t afraid-- of course she wasn’t afraid-- but I was. I steadied myself by leaning against her hip and feeling the earth steady beneath me, but I still felt cold-blooded with fear and, although it was premature, grief. I knew too many stories of death, too many gastly grizzly details. I was not afraid for us. I was afraid of what we might find, how it would hurt my heart.
“Yes, the center. Hurry, maybe we can-” Maybe we could do what we did to the wolves. What Avesta did. Save them. Foras and Furfur howl, my bloodsong, and then there is the undeniable presence of a third wolf.
“Aunty Morr,” I exhaled into Avesta’s dappled skin. There was nothing else I needed to say. I did not want to get caught, if only because of the indignity of it-- we belonged wherever our hearts took us. It was our right to roam where we pleased, and no one should be allowed to take our freedom from us, even if it they thought it was for our own good.
So I plunged headfirst into my terror, toward the dark heart of the maze which both drew me in and revolted me. The corn looked so odd, the way it bent back from my sister, like bowing. We ran, closer and closer to the heart of the maze, and our wolf-brothers howled, and
I fell.
And, not because it hurt, but because I was so damn tired of falling, I began to cry. Another skinned knee. Another inconvenience. Would I always be slowing my sister down? “I’m s-sorry,” I whispered into my sister’s skin. But my self pity was quickly forgotten. As I struggled to my feet, between sniffles I heard a loud rustling in the corn ahead. I didn’t know what else to do but lean against sister and put my head down, angling the twisted blade of my horn toward the center of the maze
@Morrighan @Avesta
