Page 156 of Into the Heartless Wood
Another wave of the Eater’s army crashes into my mother’s wood.
The trees snap their bodies
and cast them aside
like so many twigs.
My mother waits quietly, a hard set to her eyes.
The rain has washed the blood from her antlers.
She gleams
in the wet
and the wildness of the storm,
as strong and bright
as lightning.
Across the plain, my sisters and my mother’s trees rip the Eater’s soldiers apart.
Bodies are strewn on the rain-soaked ground.
Trees burn and burn.
Still my mother waits.
She turns her head and sees me still kneeling in the grass.
She frowns. One crook of her finger, and I am jerked upright again, as if on an invisible lead. “It is time for you to prove your worth, worthless one.”
I am dimly aware
of the thud of hooves coming from the southwest.
Of shapes coming toward us, mud thick and flying.
I blink the rain from my eyes, and the shapes come into focus: six horsemen, ragged and wounded.
One of them is riding double with another soldier, his left arm pinned to his side in a sling.
I know his shape
as I know his soul.
My body flashes cold with pain.
My heart falls.
My mother smiles her vicious smile.
She clenches her hand, and my body jolts into motion.
She orders: “Kill the boy. Kill him slowly. And when you have done it, bring me his soul. Perhaps then I will have mercy on you, and make your death swift. Go. Now.” She waves her hand.
Against my will, I move to meet the riders.
