—maybird—
Rook thinks that the scars will stay forever, two ugly puncture marks ruining the perfect white of my stockings.
He thinks this reproachfully, with just the right amount of glee to remind me that he hates me, as if I would ever forget, while he drops a pile of purple berries by my head. They bounce and burst on the damp moss carpet. I gather the good ones up before they can flee.
"You're wrong," I say to him angrily. Scars had no place on my body; Ma had banished them from ever settling. Whenever I had gone home with a skinned knee or cut lip (and only after Elder or one of her empty-headed acolytes refused to see to me) Ma would pull me after her to the yard with the glass greenhouse, her lips pressed in a line, and kill two butterflies in the butterfly garden, one blue, one white. From the song I knew that one butterfly was enough, but that she had killed two to make me feel bad.
A butterfly for a cut, a starling for a bone. Three mice born at twilight, for health you've never known.
I hold one of the purple berries up to a fragment of sunlight and watch as it sparks off of the dewdrops clinging to the berry's skin. Frowning, I throw one at Rook and he snags it out of the air with his mouth, swallowing with exaggerated gusto. I am warier now of eating the things Rook forages for me, without first waiting to see if they will sicken him.
You underestimated her. He ambles towards me, but not before stamping his hoof down on a black beetle skittering across the dirt. Admit it.
I freeze my face as Rook kicks the beetle's crushed body away, a spindly leg still twitching. Without looking I pelt one of the greener, harder berries at his eye. He ducks it easily, and if his deer's mouth was capable of it, I know it would be busy twisting itself into a smirk.
"Her mother must not have raised her very well," I sniff. "Are all outsiders like her?"
Rook snorts. Worse. I toss a pocketful of berries into my mouth.
—
“Why are you here?”
Elder used to say, when we were bad enough to anger her, that the Goddess bound together the fate-strings of those she wished to punish. She would tear down storm clouds large and small and blow them on a southerly wind into the hearts of the bound, setting them at each other like starved tigers in a pen.
When I hear her voice and the unmistakeable slice slice slice of her tail over the crackling of the bonfire, I think of this story and wonder: what deed had she done to deserve the Goddess's punishment?
Was it as bad as mine?
I turn slowly, because to turn quickly is to suggest fear and eventual submission. So I turn slowly, my mask a second skin, bone and feathers and Skyweaver to protect me from red malevolence and death-magic. Rook is silent besides me, his mind distracted by the heat of the fire, the laughter of the crowd, the smell of his childhood perfuming the night. I nudge him. He jumps, startled.
I am silent for a slow heartbeat, more crow than girl, more shadow than crow. There are hellebores in my braid and they are as red as the horn that glints like a saber dipped in moonlight and firelight on her head. I think of hellebores to avoid thinking about other red things like anger; my answer rolls over and over on my tongue until it is the perfect shape, the perfect texture.
"I found you," I say. The lie tastes like berries on my tongue. "Girl-of-death-and-cardinals."
He thinks this reproachfully, with just the right amount of glee to remind me that he hates me, as if I would ever forget, while he drops a pile of purple berries by my head. They bounce and burst on the damp moss carpet. I gather the good ones up before they can flee.
"You're wrong," I say to him angrily. Scars had no place on my body; Ma had banished them from ever settling. Whenever I had gone home with a skinned knee or cut lip (and only after Elder or one of her empty-headed acolytes refused to see to me) Ma would pull me after her to the yard with the glass greenhouse, her lips pressed in a line, and kill two butterflies in the butterfly garden, one blue, one white. From the song I knew that one butterfly was enough, but that she had killed two to make me feel bad.
A butterfly for a cut, a starling for a bone. Three mice born at twilight, for health you've never known.
I hold one of the purple berries up to a fragment of sunlight and watch as it sparks off of the dewdrops clinging to the berry's skin. Frowning, I throw one at Rook and he snags it out of the air with his mouth, swallowing with exaggerated gusto. I am warier now of eating the things Rook forages for me, without first waiting to see if they will sicken him.
You underestimated her. He ambles towards me, but not before stamping his hoof down on a black beetle skittering across the dirt. Admit it.
I freeze my face as Rook kicks the beetle's crushed body away, a spindly leg still twitching. Without looking I pelt one of the greener, harder berries at his eye. He ducks it easily, and if his deer's mouth was capable of it, I know it would be busy twisting itself into a smirk.
"Her mother must not have raised her very well," I sniff. "Are all outsiders like her?"
Rook snorts. Worse. I toss a pocketful of berries into my mouth.
—
“Why are you here?”
Elder used to say, when we were bad enough to anger her, that the Goddess bound together the fate-strings of those she wished to punish. She would tear down storm clouds large and small and blow them on a southerly wind into the hearts of the bound, setting them at each other like starved tigers in a pen.
When I hear her voice and the unmistakeable slice slice slice of her tail over the crackling of the bonfire, I think of this story and wonder: what deed had she done to deserve the Goddess's punishment?
Was it as bad as mine?
I turn slowly, because to turn quickly is to suggest fear and eventual submission. So I turn slowly, my mask a second skin, bone and feathers and Skyweaver to protect me from red malevolence and death-magic. Rook is silent besides me, his mind distracted by the heat of the fire, the laughter of the crowd, the smell of his childhood perfuming the night. I nudge him. He jumps, startled.
I am silent for a slow heartbeat, more crow than girl, more shadow than crow. There are hellebores in my braid and they are as red as the horn that glints like a saber dipped in moonlight and firelight on her head. I think of hellebores to avoid thinking about other red things like anger; my answer rolls over and over on my tongue until it is the perfect shape, the perfect texture.
"I found you," I say. The lie tastes like berries on my tongue. "Girl-of-death-and-cardinals."
we belong to the light, we belong to the thunder
