hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She doesn’t think he’ll ever understand the way wanderlust is burned like a brand into the flesh of her heart. But then neither does she. It doesn’t make any sense that she is always letting herself be pulled away from the safety of Offspring, of her family, of this cold, snowy place that somehow feels like home. But it’s like there are pieces missing still, pieces she does not know how to live without, and she cannot convince herself that it will ever be time to stop looking. Her twin brother is out there somewhere, her other half in a way that no one else could ever be. She dreams in memories, their childhood played out like stuttered images and she can remember taking care of him- or maybe he took care of her, but they were whole and together. It is when she wakes from dreams like these with a sickness borne of worry burning holes in her belly that she leaves without warning. She cannot think, cannot reason with herself. All she wants in those moments is to go to where her mother calls home, to find him there and safe and content and know that this world hadn’t managed to ruin him, too. But he is gone, always gone, like a star in the cold, black sky. She has the echoes of memories, pieces of their past, but none of it is tangible, none of it is real anymore.
I just need to know that he’s okay. She wants to tell him, to explain, but it sounds weak even to her own ears so she holds onto a silence that consumes her in the same, slow way shadow consumes the world at the end of each day. How can I sit quiet in this place I call home, beside the love of my life, surrounded by our family and not feel treachery burning me up like a fever. How can I be happy when I don’t even know if he’s okay, I don’t deserve it.
But she traps these truths, these secrets, and holds them tight against the underside of her heart where he won’t be able to find them. Instead when he pushes her away with violence in his words, she lets him. Any fight she had was long since gone; any energy gained in those rare moments of sleep must have bled away with the wound in her neck because she was just a heartbeat away from giving out. But she stayed and she swayed and her dark, beautiful face crumpled beneath the weight of everything she carried on her shoulders.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” she tells him finally, agreeing with his sentiment with much less fervor than he had spoken it, “not now, it was reckless. And I should have told you.” She swallows the rest of the sentence, the damning part. But you would have told me no and I would have gone anyways. But the next bit feels like a punch to the chest and she cannot help but gasp at the way fresh agony rolls over her in unending waves. He actually thought she had invited Argo and Nevi to go with her, that she deliberately lured them from the safety of their home. “You must think I’m a terrible mother.” Is all she can manage as she turns from him bitterly, her words sharp and barbed to match the way her heart felt where he had buried his knife. “But surely you must agree that I’m no good for this family. Didn’t I lure our children into the dangerous wild because I am selfish and disobedient?” She feels wild in her grief, in this lack of faith, and she doesn’t know why she won’t just tell him the truth. That she had left without the boys, that she had no idea they followed her until it was too late to turn around. But she won’t tell him now because there is a part of her, a furious, jagged piece that no longer thinks he deserves the truth in this moment.
She slips further away from him, just a few more stiff strides. But it is not in that wispy way that seems so second nature, not in the way shadows hide from the sun. This proximity is killing her, to be so close to the one she loves most, to want to touch and hold and be held, to have her wounds kissed until they don’t hurt, but to see only anger and disgust in a face that has only ever been kind from the very first moment.
Look at you. He says, and for the first time she hates the way it feels when his eyes pick out each individual smear of blood, the way they settle against the weeping hole in the side of her neck. She feels undone by those jack o’ lantern eyes, red and haunting and so full of disappointment when they come to rest on her face. He does turn away then, before she has a chance to, and she is startled by how much worse this feels.
When he turns back again and breaks the silence, she is only quiet, only hollow. The grief still remains, the knife he buried in her chest, but it feels suddenly unimportant. “I stay because I love you.” Not loved, love. But this confession feels like choking on glass, like she would’ve rather kept it to herself because she no longer trusts that he won’t wield this truth like a weapon against her. “But don’t ever ask me not to wander, I won’t be walled off from the rest of my family.” Her eyes are dark and bruised and she refuses to look at him for a long time. But then a note in his tone changes, the edge to his words dull just a little and her eyes flash warily to his face. “You have always been enough, Offspring, always.” She cannot help it when she drifts closer again, though her movements are awkward and stuttered from the way her body aches and protests. “Don’t ever doubt that you are mine and I am yours. I will always come back to you.”
She doesn’t close the distance between them, but she does reach across it with the soft of her nose to lip at the velvet of his dark, whiskered mouth. “You’re mine.” She says again, so much softer this time though her voice stutters with the old grief that had caught like a burr in her throat. “And you may not like it, but I’m yours.” She pauses and closes her eyes for a moment, willing him not to push her away because she isn’t sure she would have anything left in her to push back.
I thought I'd lost you, he says, and she can still feel the bruises in her chest from when he had assumed she would ever lure their children out into danger. You still might, she thinks as she pulls away from his nose, tucking her chin back to the curve of her stained, pink chest, stop pushing.
Isle
