It said only one thing, over and over, a repetition of inescapable anguish
Last night they (for they are always a they) had lingered in the castle after the moon fell instead of in the garden. The old castle-keeper had promised a story by the rolling inferno of a fire in the library and Danaë, who often listened to him tell her how to grow a garden instead of kill it, had settled down eagerly to hear the tale of the monster in the woods that came before mother.
Once there were more monsters in the woods than horses, back when the trails were thick with vine instead of pathways worn down by the careless mortals. Here she had given him a look, as if to say you are a mortal old man, but he quieted her with that strange look of otherness that quelled her where mortals never could.
The castle-keeper carried on.
In the darkest part of the wood there lived the Bramblebears. Years ago they lived not as solitary bears do but in a pack and when they hunted the entire forest took up singing a knell for anything they set their hunger at. Nothing survived their hunger when it roused to a fever pitch when the winter faded. There had been more to the story of course, but Danaë had stopped listening there: the entire forest took up singing
The entire forest took up singing.
It is the song she’s looking for when she strays from the mortal-path, to the stag-path, to the wolf-path, to the nothing-path. She’s listening for it when the willow turns to oak, the oak to pine, and the pine to knotted winter-dead trees she has no name for. In the silence she listens for the weeping of the pine and the lament of the rabbits-- for any hint of the song that echoes in her bones: a knell, a death knell, over and over again until she’s started to wonder if it’s the only song her blood will ever sing.
When the first note of the song echoes in her blood, a sonnet of blood and bones begging for root and vine, she’s looking to her sister for direction. Isolt has always been the one made for the hunt. She knows she’s made for whatever happens after they’ve laid their teeth at a tender throat and drank. Her magic, her life, comes quickly on the heels of death or it comes not at all. And she’s waiting for death (for Isolt) to lead her to the life where the song is telling them to go.
Hurry, her blood is telling her in a voice that sounds so very like the castle-keeper, the pack has slumbered for long enough..
Once there were more monsters in the woods than horses, back when the trails were thick with vine instead of pathways worn down by the careless mortals. Here she had given him a look, as if to say you are a mortal old man, but he quieted her with that strange look of otherness that quelled her where mortals never could.
The castle-keeper carried on.
In the darkest part of the wood there lived the Bramblebears. Years ago they lived not as solitary bears do but in a pack and when they hunted the entire forest took up singing a knell for anything they set their hunger at. Nothing survived their hunger when it roused to a fever pitch when the winter faded. There had been more to the story of course, but Danaë had stopped listening there: the entire forest took up singing
The entire forest took up singing.
It is the song she’s looking for when she strays from the mortal-path, to the stag-path, to the wolf-path, to the nothing-path. She’s listening for it when the willow turns to oak, the oak to pine, and the pine to knotted winter-dead trees she has no name for. In the silence she listens for the weeping of the pine and the lament of the rabbits-- for any hint of the song that echoes in her bones: a knell, a death knell, over and over again until she’s started to wonder if it’s the only song her blood will ever sing.
When the first note of the song echoes in her blood, a sonnet of blood and bones begging for root and vine, she’s looking to her sister for direction. Isolt has always been the one made for the hunt. She knows she’s made for whatever happens after they’ve laid their teeth at a tender throat and drank. Her magic, her life, comes quickly on the heels of death or it comes not at all. And she’s waiting for death (for Isolt) to lead her to the life where the song is telling them to go.
Hurry, her blood is telling her in a voice that sounds so very like the castle-keeper, the pack has slumbered for long enough..
