I couldn’t escape it, that persistent voice, lingering in the blood pulsing through my veins.
If the forest is singing I cannot hear it over the sound of its hunger. I cannot hear it over the growl of my own stomach, or the snarling of my sister's heart, or the clacking of our monster's jaws.
But I think that the sound of all those things together is more of a poem than any I might find in a book. This is the only story I ever want to write.
But I think that the sound of all those things together is more of a poem than any I might find in a book. This is the only story I ever want to write.
E
ach whisper of a flower-petal eye gathers in the hollow spaces between her ribs until she feels more like a bramblebear waking up after a long winter. Isolt remembers what it felt like to lay in the ground for all those years. Through the freezing and the thawing, the wilting and the blooming, the dying and the being reborn. Deep in her veins where she is bleeding rot instead of blood, she remembers.And when she blinks she can imagine she has wisteria for eyelids instead of skin, and there is a moment in which all she sees is her bones blooming in a thousand shades of lavender-blue being stitched together.
And those eyes — those terrible, lovely, empty eyes — blink back at her.
Danaë does not need to ask her to help. The moment the ground begins to tremble she is pressing her shoulder to her twins so hard she wonders how she doesn’t break their skin and fall into her (but oh! how she wishes she did.) When the first head rises from the trembling earth with soil falling between its bared teeth her own lips peel back into a silent snarl. She can taste the forest loam between his teeth (their teeth). She can feel his jaw (their jaws) snapping through roots and rocks to break itself free.
Her bones are trembling like it is her own body that she is growing roots, and vines, and wisteria through. Like it is her own soul her magic is tightening around like a noose.
Isolt lifts her head to the gloaming darkness that is still echoing with her twin's roar. And to the hungry shadows that are whispering of famine and hunts —
she smiles.
Her heart stutters to take up the beat of the golden pollen seed shining between the ribs of their monster. She does not need to ask Danaë it she can hear the song in it, or the sound of the forest remembering how to sing its death knell like it had never paused to rest. It is there in her bloody gaze when bear and sister turn to look at her with every seed of ancient hunger caught between their teeth.
And the look in her eyes that is more creation than unicorn, more god than sister, says yes, yes, I will teach you how to hunt.
Isolt joins them. She presses her shoulder to the bramblebear's and feels his song resonating in the marrow of her bones. And she pauses only long enough to look at her sister from in between his ribs. Ivy drapes across her shooters like a robe, spiderwort tingling in her mane (and everything grows specks of mold, decay eating holes into the paper - thin leaves, in all the places where it touches her skin.)
All of them step forward together. All of the forest trembles at that first step.
Another step, one that feels like remembering how to run. Their bones are aching. Their joints are straining against the roots wiring them together. Their vines nearly tear.
Again they step, and again they hold themselves together. Again, and again, and again while the forest sings and the darkness snarls and the mouth held together with wild flowers begins to laugh through a mouthful of jagged and broken teeth.
And by the time her belly begins to hum they are running.
