I can feel the tree trembling beneath me as it dies. I can feel its sap turning to sludge, to tar, to blood as black as mine. I can feel it collapsing.
Is this what he prayed to? This tree-god that dies at the touch of a true-god?
If so, he chose the wrong god.
Is this what he prayed to? This tree-god that dies at the touch of a true-god?
If so, he chose the wrong god.
I
t is better, she thinks, that he came to her again in the daylight. In a forest that is singing and rejoicing, with branches that bow beneath their green crowns instead of reaching out like claws to him.If he were smart, he would not linger. The days were growing longer but the nights — oh, the nights were still cold. Isolt knows. She wanders these ancient halls beneath every moon with her sister, with their risen things, with the wolf-packs running free in her veins. He might be stronger now, taller — but he was still small compared to the forest. He was still a mortal before the gods.
He was still prey to be consumed (one day, one day, she whispers to the wild thing rising in her throat. But not today.)
She is not sure why she commands it all to sink back down into the depths of her. She thinks maybe it is the spring, the way the forest resumes its singing the moment she moves on from it that makes her think her hunger can wait. Maybe it is because of the way her father had walked beside her in this very forest, naming every root, every blossom, every tree-god (there had been so many — Isolt had only ever known them as tree and flower before, never by oak or beech or bluebell or larkspur or—)
Maybe it is because of the way he had glowed gold then red then gold again that night. The way it had felt like her own soul was shining a light in the forest.
Whatever it is, she steps towards him now with less hunger than she had before. And she begs her smile to be softer, to be satisfied with the one death she has caused. She begs it to be enough, if only for now, if only so long as this boy-who-loves-the-forest is here.
“Why?” there is no cruelty in her voice today. Only curiosity, only an echo of her hunger, only the wondering a god might feel towards its saints.
from my rotting corpse
