☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"you know when you become / something it eats you? the teeth / in my hand. the weight of the handle, / the meat separating from the bone."
"you know when you become / something it eats you? the teeth / in my hand. the weight of the handle, / the meat separating from the bone."
My muzzle presses down on skin, not stone – but I knew that even before I touched him. (I would know his eyes, I think, anywhere; in this world or the next.) He seems to be shivering, somewhat, beneath my touch. It is cold, especially here, especially near the sea winds (my breath fogs, and so does his), but I do not think that it is the cold that makes his skin quiver and twitch where I touch him. I stay there, a moment, not sure what I am feeling (not sure I am feeling anything much). I feel him twine my hair into a loose braid. It won’t keep; I can tell from the way he is pulling the strands, how he isn’t holding them taut or weaving them tight. It won’t keep at all, so there’s no real point to the gesture, but he does it sometimes when he’s nervous – to hair or ropes or string. Whatever he can find.
How about we go home? His voice is hushed. I raise my head, slowly, brushing away from his skin, and I turn my stare on him. (I have to crane my neck to meet his eyes, this close.)
I blink at him, faintly surprised. “Are you scared of this place, Ishak?” I’m not. I’m not even sure that I’m unnerved by it, not really – not in the way that I should be, when I see myself with scales and blood on my teeth, or when I see myself dead with a scalpel in my throat. They’re only images. They aren’t real. (Or: even if they are real, they’re on the other side of those crystals.) But, then, Ishak has always worried more than I have. He says that my lack of caution is dangerous, and he cites his near-successful attempt to assassinate me as evidence. I say that caution is useless without good reason.
The island is magic. Magic does not have to be good or evil – magic, in general, just is. It is like a sandwyrm in the sand. You might be able to pass it without trouble; you might stumble over it, and it might bite you for it. (I mean – that is my experience with magicians.) However, startling in the face of a sandwyrm will bring you trouble, even if it is not feeling especially hungry. Fear is blood in the water.
And I’m so sorry to say it, but if you haven’t found those plants you wanted to sample, I’m vetoing looking around longer for them. I ignore his tone, and, instead, I think that I would have plucked some of those weeds on the way if I’d known that he’d want to head back as soon as I’d found him. I suppose that it is logical that Ishak would hate this place. I don’t care enough about those other-Ruths, who are not me, to be too bothered by them (but I am never too bothered by anything), but Ishak has never seemed quite-
comfortable with himself.
(It’s why getting him to admit to almost anything is like pulling a child’s teeth.)
You have any thoughts on which way back? he asks, then, and I pause a moment, considering my answer carefully.
I don’t tell Ishak that I don’t think we’ll find our way out of this maze of mirrors unless the island wants us to. I don’t tell him that it isn’t a matter of finding the way – that, through all of my searching, I had paid attention to each careful path I followed, and that, on the occasion that I drew back in the way I came, I found the landscape altered. “Well, maybe,” I say, and draw back from him, looking across the crystalline shards and settling my gaze on the way that looks most familiar. “It’s hard to tell, but – that way, I think.” And I am precise by nature.
Honestly – what suggests to me that it is the right way is the little trail of blood splashed across the crystals, forming a path, I assume, towards the other-Ruth, the one with sharp, sharp teeth. I don’t tell Ishak that, either.
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HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
