"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
These are the things she knows:
she does not belong to the darkness that plumbed her up out of the depths of hell, cobbled her together with flesh that was not hers, breathed new life into her withered lungs.
No, she belongs to the place he dredged her up from.
Because the life he’d breathed into her was not life at all but something lesser.
There is a heart that lives in the cage of her chest but there is no heartbeat.
He has crudely made her whole again but there are so many vital things missing. (No pulse, no stilted pattern of breath). And he looks at her as she stands there in the darkness, unaffected by the cold of the winter that presses in around them, and he smiles.
And so she smiles in turn but there is something manic in the eyes, a kind of hysteria lurking just beneath the surface. (And she could have been beautiful, too, if not for the wrongness. If not for the ragged edges where all the parts meet. If not for the blood that pools along the edges of her lower eyelids.)
‘Go,’ he says and she does.
She does not need to be sustained. She does not yearn for warmth or nourishment and he offers her neither. Instead, he unleashes her on the world and she goes. And if one were to stop and look, they would see clearly the ladder of her spine as it presses earnestly against the flesh, the sharp edges of her ribs.
She could have been beautiful, if he had not made her so gruesome in her ugliness.
She goes and only the white parts of her glow in the half-darkness, throwing light so soft that she might have seemed ethereal if one did not look too closely.
The world is a hundred thousand burning questions, just barely stitched together with color and shape and sound- you swear if you could, you’d push against it just a little, if you could just figure out how, you could lift the film of the world and find all the dark sticky constellations that make up reality. All the tiny bits of chaos arranged in neat little rows and patterns and swirls. But your world is too small, much too tiny in the way it can fit in the palm of an island.
You shouldn’t be out here, shouldn’t be so far. You had gone with your father to Nerine, but you were not supposed to wander, and certainly not this far. ‘We will leave come morning, back to the island.’ He had said. And you think, I have until then to see the world and find its secrets. ‘Do not be reckless, Wylder.’ Comes his mother.
Reckless, but not as a compliment.
The same way the boys call you gentle when they really mean soft, or fearless when they mean to say you are careless and give no thought to yourself or to others.
You like who you are. You like the blanket of invisibility; being able to slip beneath it at will. Your footprints and those wise enough to see it are your only give away. This may be the only way you are able to come so near to her. (You would think she is strange, but you have only known your family and the North, you think maybe this is how the rest of the world is).
You emerge from that cloak of invisibility like a ripple, from head to toe. “I’m not supposed to be out here—are you?” Your smirk is a beast, there and then gone.
Wylder; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
The boy appears as if he has stepped through a rift.
As if he has materialized from thin air, sprung up out of nothing just for her.
And if she were a thing with a memory of the before, she might have recognized the smirk for what it was. A kind of private joke passed between them.
(But there are no memories. Either because the reaper had erased them or because there were never any there to begin with.)
She does not know what this means. But she grins. She grins and she lurches toward him because the reaper had built her for this. To set her loose on the world, to wreak havoc, to disgust them with her wrongness, her ugliness.
She tilts her head as the tears pool in her deep red eyes. All she has to do is blink and they will cut rivers of blood down her cheeks. For the moment, though, she only stares.
“Here?” she echoes, quiet. No, she is not supposed to be here. This much is evident in the lack of heartbeat, the way she is so crudely stitched together, how none of the pieces seem to fit together right.
“Here?” she asks again. “What is here?”
And then she blinks. She blinks and rivers of blood stream down her face, stain her cheeks, drip from her chin.
Just for her.
If she asked you, you think you could be that, just for her. You have never been just for anyone, with all your siblings, even your parents have one another.
She grins and you think is this the world? Is this the world and everyone else in it? The red pools in her eyes and you watch with something like awe (the same way you watched an ant lift a blade of grass for the first time, or when you say the northern lights.) “Are you going to cry?” You ask because you have only known your own tears when you scrapped your knee on a rough patch of ice. You ask because you wonder if this is how the rest of the world cries.
But she is grinning and you think you can’t be sad and smile at the same time. Your life is so simple—smiles mean happiness—tears mean sorrow. You have not yet learned the grace of weeping behind a happy face.
“Yes, here,” you nod encouragingly. You have little experience in conversation, you think this is normal. Your ignorance will kill you. You scrunch that young face and stare towards the heaven thinking of your very best answer. “I think it’s like my forest,” you say because you do not know that other forests exist outside of your own in the North.
And when that blood falls down her face and gathers, you watch with wide green eyes. “Oh, you are crying,” you say and shift your weight and hug your wings tighter to your small frame. “Your tears are red,” like blood you should say, but instead— “like the cardinal I found once.” You think she is lucky and you feel something tickle the back of your mind, an emotion you cannot quite place. (You will learn this emotion to be jealousy, when you see the girl you like talking to a boy that isn’t you.) “Mine are clear—like the lake,” you say. “How can I make mine red like yours?”
Wylder; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
Simple, she thinks while the blood continues to stream down her face. (Who had this face belonged to? How had he cobbled her together? How did he decide?)
He tells her that it is a forest—or, rather, he tells her that he thinks it’s like his forest—and it is an answer, certainly, but not the one she had been looking for.
She had lived once—every part of her had lived once—and they must have lived here. But she does not know where here is. The Reaper had not thought to tell her and the boy stood before has misunderstood her question.
But she just grins and weeps while he tries to explain. While he takes note of her tears. Red like a cardinal. A cardinal that drips off the end of your nose, a cardinal that slips into your mouth where the corners are upturned.
And he tells her that his tears are clear, like water. She wonders if she could coax them out of him. If she sank her teeth into his flank, would he cry? But she does not move, only grins and weeps and watches.
The answer is simple.
“Die,” she says.
“Die in your forest.”
In this forest.
“I can help,” she tells him, grinning still. As if it is not a threat. As if there is nothing at all to be afraid of.
You have seen many colors in your short life. Greens and blues and teals and white and black. But for all the colors you have seen, how is it you have seen so very little red? And maybe this is why the way it rushes down her faces holds you so tightly, so fascinated. Or maybe you are your father’s son and you cannot stand to see someone cry.
She cries and she smiles. You have not yet learned this art, so the conflicting expressions are entirely lost on you.
Die.
She says.
“Die?”
You ask.
Somewhere there are red flags going up in the back of your mind, but you either don't see them or don’t mind; anything outside of the tedious cold island life. You watch her for a moment longer, and you are a whirlwind of disturbingly sweet smiles and clever but not particularly intelligent thoughts, without the motivation to do much more than stare and consider.
“I don’t know..”
Don’t know what?
It doesn't matter.
“You can help me?” You ask because you do not know any better. Your parents thoughts you would be safe, they thought they kept you safe. It isn’t your fault, none of this is your fault. “How?” You ask and you close your mouth and push your tongue against the back of your teeth, and they taste like danger. You think…you like it.
Wylder; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
