by Tony Pi
“But I am food, don’t you see? Delicious and perfectly crisp! The best carrot you will ever taste.”
“No, no, you horrible thing—”
“Your parents are waiting, girl, your parents are waiting for you. You must help them from the earth or they will stay there forever, yes, forever!”
“I can’t!”
“It would be such an easy thing to place me in your mouth and swallow. Then you could run to your parents and all would be as it used to be. Wouldn’t it?”
The carrot shook the snow off its crown and inclined its vivid tops toward her.
“You must eat me, or I will leave your parents in the dirt.”
Sylvie picked the carrot off the ground. She held it to her mouth to bite but was sickened by its smell—it reeked like the slimy stalks of rotting flowers kept too long in water. Worse was the thick, cloying sweetness beneath the reek, identical to an orchard full of windfall apricots rotting in the summer sun. Bile flooded her tongue and she retched, but she bit into it as it had said she must. It snapped with a satisfying crunch. She expected its taste to match its smell, but the spirit was right—it was the best carrot she’d ever tasted, sweet and juicy with a hint of spice that burned her tongue and throat.
She ate the whole thing, and was immediately doubled over with a terrible pain. And then, in just a moment, the pain passed through her and away with a departing shudder.
She dropped the carrot’s crown in the snow and raced through the garden. All would be as it used to be—she knew it like she now knew the greedy emptiness in her gut. She had kept her half of the carrot’s bargain and deserved her just rewards.
Sylvie cleared the river stones from their grave with trembling hands. She pressed her ear to the earth and heard their breathing, heard the slow, shushing tu-tum of their heartbeats. The dirt split easily in her fingers, and she scooped it up in great, heaving armfuls.
But she slowed, though she wanted to shove the dirt away, wanted to grab them by the arms and drag them from their graves. But fear coiled slick and thick as eels in Sylvie’s stomach, writhing, twisting, snapping at their own tails.
The carrot was a spirit of the tricky sort, that was clear enough—what if it had lied to her? What if the hearts beating in the earth beneath were not theirs? Hot tears trailed her cheeks. But what if it were their hearts? What if it were them? Then all would be well, and all would have been worth it. Sylvie kept that thought close to her chest and steeled herself, biting her tongue against a sob that clawed at the back of her throat. She would not cry. Her tears wet the earth anyway.
With shaking hands, Sylvie brushed the last of the dirt away. She blew fine grains of earth from Mother Dar’s long eyelashes and thumbed it from the corners of Mother’s Shabna’s thin lips. Their eyes did not move beneath their lids as they had in sleep, but they were warm and breathing and unmistakably alive. They smelled as they always had, of oak and sweat, of young spring river grass sheared at the ankles, but there was a new smell beneath it, too, lingering on their skin—a smell not unlike the carrot, overripe and darkly vegetal. A shaking breath snaked past Sylvie’s lips. Had they been too long in their grave to rise?
Sylvie shook Mother Shabna’s shoulder, but Mother Shabna didn’t wake, only breathed on, sending plumes of hot breath into the frigid air. Sylvie shook Mother Dar and found her just the same. She spoke their names, shouted in their ears, begged them to open their eyes, but they would not answer. She pinched them hard in the cheek, the neck, the breast, but they did not stir, only breathed on, on, on.
Something built in Sylvie, rolling, rising in her blood. It was anger, and it spilled from her eyes in tears that fell on her mothers’ faces, that rolled down their cheeks and wet the earth beneath them. The carrot had betrayed her after all. She knew it like she knew that she would never be sated again, for the emptiness of that knowledge was a mirror to the emptiness in her gut.
Sylvie shoved the tears away, wiped the snot that fell from her nose, but she couldn’t stop the sobs that tore their way out of her chest. She fell limp into her parents’ shallow grave. If she could not have them, she figured, they would have her—they would have her nestled in the dirt like a rabbit kit in a burrow. She wiggled down between them, held tight in the warmth of their breathing, dreaming bodies. She threw an arm over Mother Dar and pulled her close. She pressed her back against the hills and valleys of Mother Shabna’s side.
Sylvie closed her eyes. As she drifted off to sleep, she felt herself grow long, felt her limbs delve into the earth, her throat thirst for its first gulp of warm spring sunlight.
Copyright © 2017 Kate Dollarhyde
Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website
Kate Dollarhyde is a narrative designer and writer of speculative fiction. You can read her stories in Gamut and Lamplight, and you can find her on Twitter as @keightdee. Though she lives in Oakland, California, her true home is on the internet.
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COVER ART
“Land of Giants,” by Ashley Dotson
Ashley Dotson is a professional fantasy artist in the game industry who specializes in illustration and concept art. Her keen sense of atmosphere and mood lends her to aim to create a strong feeling in the viewer with everything she paints. She has an art streaming channel on Twitch where you can watch her paint live. Her artwork and a contact for work inquiries can found at www.artstation.com/artist/ashleydotson.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Compilation Copyright © 2017 Firkin Press
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