Page 78 of Into the Heartless Wood
ready to do her bidding.
My sister and I stop three paces before her.
My sister bows.
I kneel, pressing my forehead into the ground,
a breath away
from the boy’s ruined body.
Claws dig into my neck, force my head up.
“I have called you for a full life of the moon, and now you come?”
“Forgive me, mother.”
She hisses and rakes her claws down my shoulder, tearing off the strip of newly healed bark.
My sister is as good as her word.
She laughs.
My mother flings me to the earth and wheels on her. “And why areyouhere, daughter?”
“To see my youngest sister made to mind.”
My mother bares her teeth.
My sister flinches, but holds her ground. “She has learned her lesson, you see. She comes to you on her knees, ready for a new orb.”
Pain sears through me
as my mother rips another patch of bark
from my back.
She pulls the violets from my hair
one
by
one
and flings them to the grass.
She grinds them under her heel.
I curl in on myself, dew pouring from my eyes.
I think of music on the hill.
Of dancing with Owen.
Of looking at stars through a telescope that lies ruined somewhere in the wood.
I try not to think of him going to the heartless tree.
