It said only one thing, over and over, a repetition of inescapable anguish
She should be sorry when the blade brings blood to the surface of his skin. She should be sorry when the scent of iron and rotten wood rises into the air around them, instead of the purr of beetle wings. But when she pulls back it is belatedly and the curl of her lips doesn’t quite manage to pull itself into the shape of apology. Mold stains creep down the walls towards and from somewhere above them water starts to fall (all brine and weed from the sea far, far above them like a tidal wave of cosmos).
When butterflies start to fly from him, milkweed starts to grow in the molded wood grout between the stones. Soon the smell of weed and flowers (those she’s grown to give a bed to the butterflies of him) fills the spaces between his fermented forest blood and the brined tears of the sea. Danaë, for the first time since she entered the belly of the monster-city, inhales hard enough to make her lungs ache. And she holds the air there, in the center of a monster-unicorn, with all the determination of the city to keep each particle of the outside in.
Perhaps she should wonder, at the thought, why she knows in her very bones that the island means to keep them all.
But she does not wonder, or exhale, when he lays his tines against her cheek and throat.
In that moment she knows exactly what her mother would tell her what to do. She knows that she could cleave the crown of antlers from his brow, and the bird-bones from his shoulders. She could unweave the sinew from his bones and let the sparrows of his organs free from their cages. In that moment she knows a hundred ways to unmake him, to return him to ink instead of the art made of ink.
Isolt would not hesitate. But Danaë is not Isolt and so she does.
And she breaks the silence with words where her sister would have only filled the nothingness up with screams. The sound of her voice is not a battlecry, but a sigh of wind through the spider-legs crawling across her lips and between the butterfly wings that linger across her nose. With her voice she lets go, finally (finally!), of the aching pressure of their insides caught in her lungs. Danaë, who is still hesitating, hopes he will catch it.
“Careful,” she says with a flutter of her pulse kissing down the tine pressed to it, “you will find no butterflies or spiders in me.”
When butterflies start to fly from him, milkweed starts to grow in the molded wood grout between the stones. Soon the smell of weed and flowers (those she’s grown to give a bed to the butterflies of him) fills the spaces between his fermented forest blood and the brined tears of the sea. Danaë, for the first time since she entered the belly of the monster-city, inhales hard enough to make her lungs ache. And she holds the air there, in the center of a monster-unicorn, with all the determination of the city to keep each particle of the outside in.
Perhaps she should wonder, at the thought, why she knows in her very bones that the island means to keep them all.
But she does not wonder, or exhale, when he lays his tines against her cheek and throat.
In that moment she knows exactly what her mother would tell her what to do. She knows that she could cleave the crown of antlers from his brow, and the bird-bones from his shoulders. She could unweave the sinew from his bones and let the sparrows of his organs free from their cages. In that moment she knows a hundred ways to unmake him, to return him to ink instead of the art made of ink.
Isolt would not hesitate. But Danaë is not Isolt and so she does.
And she breaks the silence with words where her sister would have only filled the nothingness up with screams. The sound of her voice is not a battlecry, but a sigh of wind through the spider-legs crawling across her lips and between the butterfly wings that linger across her nose. With her voice she lets go, finally (finally!), of the aching pressure of their insides caught in her lungs. Danaë, who is still hesitating, hopes he will catch it.
“Careful,” she says with a flutter of her pulse kissing down the tine pressed to it, “you will find no butterflies or spiders in me.”
