Page 132 of Into the Heartless Wood
arm.
She shrieks at me: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” She drags her other hand across my face, gouging deep cuts on both cheeks.
She slams me to the ground
and I cannot breathe.
Stars wheel
before my eyes.
I am afraid.
I
have
never
been
so
afraid.
“You’ve been to seethem.” She tugs a briar from her dress and uses it to roughly bind my wrists. “Yourbrothers.”
The thorns pierce my flesh.
My blood pours
amber and red into the grass:
the last drops
of my humanity.
“I can smell the stink of them on you, smell the monstrous, blasphemous form you wore, the form that still clings to you like moss. And why?Why?Because you wereprotectingahuman boy!”
Dew leaks
from my eyes.
I gulp
and gulp for air.
My mother says: “I know. I KNOW! The trees have been watching you, and they told me when I asked. They told me that not only did you spare his life once, but you spared it again and again and again. That you hid him from your sisters, that you invited him into your bed.”
I say: “I kissed him. I kissed him twice, and that is all.”
I can still feel
the press
of his lips.
Their warmth.
