Page 46 of Into the Heartless Wood
pours
down
my
cheeks.
“I will not.”
She drags one claw across my face,
deep enough for sap to well up.
“Do you think yourself above us? Do you imagine yourself to be something more than what our mother made us to be?”
“I am more. I have named myself.”
“Monsters do not have names.”
Pain pulses
from my ruined hands.
“I do not want to be a monster.”
She sneers at me
as she rips the orb from my throat,
as she collects the dead mens’ souls
and leaves their bodies
for the earth
to swallow.
Then they are all of them gone
and the wood is empty
of souls,
of life.
Wind stirs through the trees.
It washes away
the scent of blood.
My sister kneels on the ground,
relinquishes the orb to the power
of the heartless tree.
Strength for the wood and our mother,
