half of me for growth, the other for decay
I am counting diseased flowers like other unicorns count stars. I can see it there, before the others do — the specks of black that look like pollen, the sludge that moves up their veins instead of water. I can see a tulip beginning to bow when it becomes too weak to stand.
I am looking for it. I am helping it along because it is the only way I know how to cure the sick. And I wonder —
I wonder how others do not see it.
I am looking for it. I am helping it along because it is the only way I know how to cure the sick. And I wonder —
I wonder how others do not see it.
A
s she walks through row upon row of planted tulips, she is not listening to the whispers that follow her. And she is not watching for the eyes that follow her, or the looks that tell her (as if she did not already know) that she is other. She only walks on and on and on until she gets to the patch of flowers that are as white as picked-clean bones laid out in patterns across the field. Today all Isolt sees are the flowers trembling on their long, thin stalks as she walks amongst them. And in the absence of wind, or song, or a reason to dance — she knows it is her who makes them shiver as though it were still winter. Like a den full of rabbits huddling close to one another for warmth while the wolf waits outside.
The thought makes her lips curl into a look that is more snarl than smile.
When the edges of the first tulip turns black and begins to curl in upon itself, she is still smiling. And she is still smiling when she hears the too-sweet, fermented smell of it fill the air like honey, like peace, like death. And she leans in close to it, close enough that her lips brush against the petals as softly as a kiss. At her touch the tulip begins to weep pollen instead of tears, and Isolt can hear it beginning to cry as its stalk gives out and it crumbles to dust at her hooves.
Somewhere, she knows, her sister is learning to love her own rotten flowers. And somewhere their father is growing new rows, and new patterns, and new life to replace the ones they are hollowing out.
But here in this row there is no purity, or honor, or holiness, or life. There is only a new-god who smiles a unicorn’s smile, and a circle of death that sparks to life beneath her lips.
When the second tulip dies like the first (but with a shriek instead of a cry), she collects its rotten pollen like black sludge tears along her eyelashes. And when the third tulip dies (this one with a shriek, and petals that turn sharp as knives before they break against the skin of her), still her smile does not waiver.
It is not until she has stopped counting that she begins to wonder if her sister would, were she here. And it is only then that she looks down on her garden — for the spot of death in a field of life is as much her’s as the bones that lay hidden in the earth — and sees only her sister’s face looking back at her in every wound that bleeds pollen and ash.
And if she were less of a thing made in magic, or less of a monster wearing the face of a unicorn, she might have felt remorse for the deaths then. She might have learned that she could walk away and leave the field for those who still dream in flowers to enjoy. She might have recognized the war drum beat of her heart as a hundred wishes — a hundred aches and wants that beg her to move away and find a song that will not lead her into madness.
But she is a monster. And the eyes that watch her as the not-monsters hurry away from the plague reigning like freedom among her tulips is all the affirmation she will ever need.
Her circle of death only grows, and grows, and grows around her until the only color that is left in her shadow is a blackness deep and terrible. The hunger inside of her chest grows teeth, and claws, and sets them all against her ribs with all the rage of a wild thing determined to escape.
And in the center of that dark circle a single cardinal flower begins to grow, tall and bloody and beautiful.
