As if hearing his thoughts, the tree’s great limbs bent forward, but Wilder did not feel any wind or breeze. Instead, the water around him began to warm and bubble. Water lilies with huge poppies bobbed and floated in the bubbling water. Wilder tried to back out, his voice lost in the rumbling of the strange tree, but something twisted around his ankles, held him in place. He screamed, fearing it was a snake, and reached into the water. Instead of scales, his fingers felt wet vines and scalelike leaves. He tried to rip the heavy vines off, his fingers digging into them. He yanked one and tossed it. It landed in the muddy pool with a splash, heavy as a walking stick. Wilder felt the air whirling behind him. He turned to see the triple tree’s branches twisting like angry snakes.
Wilder turned to run, but his legs were caught again in a nest of vines. They dug into his flesh, stung and burned him like fire ants. “Thistle, help me. Why are you just standing there?”
She stared past him, at the great knotted tree, at the swirling waters; then her eyes rested on him.
“You could say,” she said, “in my way, I am helping you.
This is one of the oldest, most sacred spots. Right now, you are in the intersection of the river and the tree. You are in the delta of civilizations, a place most dear to me, the place where I was born. Where I am seen.”
Wilder flailed his arms in the water, legs rooted. “Listen, baby, I see you and you are so beautiful to me — I just need you to help me right now. See if you can help pull me up. I’m tangled in these weird vines. Some kind of bad storm is coming, and I think that old tree is about to fall down.”
Wilder didn’t like how she was looking. She was facing him, but her water-eddy eyes seemed to peer through him, focusing on something else. Wilder felt more wind at his back. The air filled with the rustling of leaves and needles, the sound of a hundred cicadas, a humming buzzing sound that rattled his ears, jarred his teeth.
Thistle closed her eyes and nodded her head. She opened them, a peaceful smile on her face as she crouched before him. “I like to believe in balance, in the natural order of things. I take from life, and I like to think that I’m giving life as well.” She reached above him. Wilder gripped her arm.
“Thistle, please,” he hissed. He leaned forward and stroked her cheek, his muddy fingers caressing her hair. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I need you —”
“You don’t see me,” she said. “Even now. You never did.” Thistle jerked out of his grip. A clump of black hair fell away in Wilder’s hand. He stared, his breath shallow.
“Thistle, what’s wrong?” he whispered. He held the hair for a moment, then let it drop into the water. It floated like a feather.
“Are you sick? Why didn’t you tell me? Is that why you wanted me to meet your mother? How long have you known?”
His mind was racing, panic spreading. If she had cancer, he thought he could deal. Maybe. He wanted to hold her, but he couldn’t get out of the water. He was pulling with all his strength, and the vines that held him barely budged. Why did he have to find out like this?
“You’re going to have to try, baby, to pull me, or go for help. I can’t stay out here, not like this.”
Thistle’s eyes were on the hair that still floated on the skin of water. Her hands flew to her scalp.
“Damn,” she said. She held her hands up. Her nails were gone. She slipped her silver rings off and tossed them into the water next to Wilder. They sank with tiny little bubbles. The nail on her index finger dangled by a thread of cuticle. No blood, just dry, flaking skin. The air hummed again, a whispering sound like many rushing waters. “I know, Mama,” she whispered. “I know.”
“Thistle, stop it.” Sickness and anger rose to his throat. “Your nails are falling off. You’re falling apart, and you’re talking crazy!” He swallowed, covered his mouth with a muddy fist, lowered his voice. “What kind of cancer do you have?” She frowned at him, stared. Wilder shook his head, tried to make sense of Thistle’s decay. How could she hurt like that and not bleed? “You wouldn’t accept chemo, no matter what the doctors said, so that means you’ve been trying to fight it naturally this whole time?” He closed his eyes. “That’s why you’ve been eating all that weird shit?” But her hair, her hair fell out in his hand.
He shook his head, confused. “Baby, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Wilder jerked and strained in the mud, trying to walk. He clawed at the sediment and silt, his legs struggling underwater. For a moment he felt the vines loosen from his knees then creep up his legs again, holding him still. The vines pricked and stung him more, held him tighter. Everywhere they touched him, his skin felt itchy and scaly, as if sunburned. His legs began to feel heavy, leaden.
He tried to reach for Thistle, but her eyes looked different. They caught the silver light, giving her face an eerie amber glow.
Her skin was ashen, her cheeks hollow.
Thistle stared in the space above his head, as if she hadn’t heard anything he’d said. Wilder looked up to see one of the knotted tree’s long thick branches hovering above him. He froze. Thistle picked seven bell-like yellow blossoms from the limb and held them in her open palms. An invitation.
Wilder shook his head no, but Thistle kissed him, her mouth filled with tiny razor-like teeth. He tried to pull back, but he felt sleepy. Her tongue was sweet, like honey and mead, and she held him as she always did and whispered to him, the songs that only she could sing, with words that only she remembered the meaning to. His eyes grew bleary, and he heard more than he ever had — the croak of the plump, brown toad beneath an unfurled leaf, the jewel beetle scuttling across algae-covered bark, and the wind in the leaves, the many hundred leaves rustling above his head and a chorus of crickets.
Thistle smelled of maple syrup and buttermilk, of wet grass and rain-soaked walking sticks, of a wet stone covered by moss and babbling brook. Her eyes were too round, too full of silver and purple-golden light. Her skin was riven by deep whorls and lines, as if it had been carved with a knife.
When Thistle fed him the seven bells, Wilder’s mouth was still full with the taste of sweet nectar, but then the blossoms stung the inside of his jaw, and the tip of his tongue went numb. He stared at her, struggled to keep his thoughts clear, to make his lips and teeth form words. Only shallow gasps escaped, a jaw harp deflated, out of tune. Recognition clouded his eyes. Wilder’s heart was brittle, ready to break.
As the poison flowed through him, he felt the hum of a strange touch; fallen roots blossomed in electric earth. He was being lifted, carried backward through the waters.
“Don’t struggle,” Thistle called to him. “Mama just wants to meet you.”
As the vines covered him, the limbs pulling him closer to the great tree’s bosom, Wilder felt pieces of himself, like pieces of dusk, fall apart and be gathered in the bark and dirt. Thistle was naked. Now he could see her — a body no longer woman but willowy tree. Her bright round forehead shone in the moonlight. Her skin was tattooed with the whorls and swirling textures found on old-growth trees. Snails and mussels clung to her legs. Flowering vines and green moss wrapped around her thighs. Wilder thought he saw blue mountains, perhaps galaxies flowing in her ancient hair that now fell away in clumps like riverweed and algae at her feet.
If he could move he would have reached for her. He would have tasted her with his fingertips and tongue, but she was out of reach. He wanted to cringe, to creep away. He wanted to lean into his lover’s palms. He couldn’t do either, so Wilder no longer tried to move.
His eyes asked the question his lips could not.
“People are the cancer,” she said as she flicked an emerald beetle from her shoulder and followed him into the muddy pit. “Not all of them, of course, but enough of the wrong ones to wreck the balance. The movement needs people with heart,” she said. “Spirits committed to systemic solutions, long-game change,” she said. “But that’s not you, is it, Wilder? At least not yet.”
Wilder felt his breath grow short. W
here each began, a tickling fire flowed through his blood. Seven thousand songs surged from stones as Thistle walked over to him. In the ghostly light she still looked almost human, beautiful. Wilder’s ears hummed. Alarm, desire, and fear echoed in his temples, a competing heartbeat.
She embraced him, smelled like the strange, yellow blossoms.
Thistle caressed his throat with a sandpaper tongue; the skin peeled off in gentle flakes like wet dark bark. “I told you Mama would love, love you…” Her voice was airy, a solemn fractal, whispery as the wind. Wilder craned his neck to reach for her.
The fragrant pheromones released from the tree dulled his pain, mixed it with his hunger. Even in the face of his dwindling energy, the memory of life fading fast, desire welled inside him; however, Thistle had completely transformed. She was no longer recognizable, and he was no longer sure how he could love her, but he did.
—
He remained still as a rock in a river of sound as Thistle and her Mama pulled apart the disparate shreds of who he used to be. In their presence, his thoughts felt noisy, cluttered. He tried to clear his throat to speak, but he could not feel it or his mouth. A gurgle and a rush of air escaped the hole where his throat and esophagus used to be. If he were a pipe, she could have played him. Wilder the bone harp, the baddest instrument in the world.
Thistle gently ran her fingers across his chest, then ripped his tank off. His eyes widened. “Don’t worry, Wilder,” she said, her lips and sawteeth stained blood red, his back sinking into the smooth base of the knotted tree. Mama licked him, and he sensed another part of himself slide away. A spine of bones exposed to the night’s air, he thought he could hear pieces of the old flesh drop into the waters, remnants of his former selves sink into the muck, but he was no longer certain if he still had ears.
“The Tupelo, Black Gum tree has a strong heartwood,” Thistle said. “It’s one of the oldest native trees here, like the oaks, and the poplars, but, of course, not as old as Mama. And you’ve probably guessed, Mama is not from around here. She came with the river. But Wilder, you’ll have plenty of time to contemplate the true meaning of change. Mama will keep you company. She’ll sing you the old songs and tell you her stories. She’ll keep you safe with the others until —″
Brambles curved around his chin. Thorns pierced his flesh while he tasted her final honeysuckled kiss. His thoughts disappeared in the rising mist. Wilder’s mind rang with a new truth. He would die here. Perhaps he would be reborn. To spring from the earth, a fresh green shoot, dark roots twisting deep beneath the river’s belly. A sapling tree, straining for the scent of rain, reaching for change. Wilder felt as if he had traveled through a dream, as if he woke beneath a river and there was no way back through the forest except to become clear water, a spring to fill and heal himself. His eyes wide awake, his body unable to move, his fear vanished into the dark center of things. As Wilder watched over Thistle’s shoulder, her tiny teeth sinking into his cheek,
he saw where she had dropped the first gift he had made for her, into the bubbling earth. Muddy watery fingers reached in languid waves to snatch the jacket up. The world afar,
the last spike floated
in dark womb-water, shimmered
a sinking star.
The Lonely, Salty Sea
by A. J. Locke
My lover and I,
we stand on a cliff
overlooking the sea,
watching the days ignite
and the birth of nights.
Then one day, said he to me;
you have set fire to my soul my dear,
did you know?
In your eyes there shine things
much brighter than stars,
and these are things I know,
because stars are too far off to be sure.
My love for you
is more vast than the sea,
because even the ocean has an end,
but not you and I my dear,
what we are is infinite.
And now I must tell you a secret,
said my lover to me;
sometimes I dream
of being buried with you at sea.
We sink to depths unfathomed,
with our arms around tight,
and our hearts beating their last,
and though it is but a dream,
will you dance this dance with me?
I smiled at him,
this captor of my heart,
and took his hand,
while the breeze of day
turned into the wind of night,
and said I,
dreams are best when realized.
Then with his hand in mine,
we danced, I and he,
towards the cliff’s edge,
and the lonely, salty sea.
Scales
by Cherene Sherrard
Ilhas perdidas
no meio do mar,
esquecidas
num canto do Mundo
em que as ondas embalam,
maltratam,
abraçam...
— “Arquipélago,” Jorge Barbosa
It felt good to vomit in the morning. The taste of everything acidic and rotten leaving her in one, sometimes two, voluptuous heaves. Afterwards, Vriel swished lukewarm water around her mouth. The faint metallic tang of the filter dislodged the bitter taste of bile. It left her euphoric until David asked:
“Maybe you’re pregnant?”
There, just beneath his casual tone, she could hear the hopeful lilt he tried to suppress. Furious, she smiled wider.
“I suppose there’s a .5% chance, right?” She kept it light, but he pressed her.
“You wouldn’t do anything without talking to me first?” “You’re going to be late,” she said, cracking one of the eggs.
She slowly plucked away the shell until she heard him shut the door, and tried to picture her anger pooling from her heels and evaporating upward towards the skylight.
When she returned to her room she noticed her fountain pen, carelessly left on the bed, had leaked a jagged blue squiggle across the crumpled beige duvet. Next to it, a silk swathed notebook — a birthday gift from David — lay open. She must have been writing when she fell asleep last night. Drawing the book into her lap, she reviewed her midnight meditations: On gloomy days, drowning seems kinder than resisting the call. It begins with a tug on your big toe, a subtle pull that spreads to the entire foot, but is still bearable: mosquito’s sting, a shoe pebble. Then, abruptly, it’s gone. Only to reappear days or weeks later as a blockage in your ear: a whirring, ringing hum. You yawn, tilt your head, and turn the volume up on the television, but it just gets louder. Then all at once it’s in your belly. Food loses its warmth leaving acidic tides cooled by sweet, icy drinks — the only thing you can stomach. The pain has the dull torment of a toothache, but just when you want to yank it, make it sharp and focused, it rises in the lower abdomen, clustering around the hips and the groin. To hear Cassia tell it, it’s the feeling you have just before an orgasm, or a deep swell, but ultimately there is no climax. As you near fulfillment, anticipating its crash into rock and sand, it abates in soft foam.
The indulgent lyricism of her own writing put her to sleep. Some hours later, she woke to the tinkle of wind chimes. She smelled Cassia before her eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight pushing itself into the gloom of her bedroom. Cassia’s still damp hair reminded Vriel of wet coral, and the bergamot oil she used to dress it put in her mind of an unripe orange. The music came from her sister’s silver bangles.
“Tiger’s eye,” Cassia said, her voice mimicking their mother’s affectionate echo. She could almost feel the shade of her mother’s hand tilt her chin slightly upward in wonder at the color of her irises, ordinary in every other family she knew.
Vriel pulled her chin away from her sister’s probing fingers. “I won’t die, Cassia.”
Her sister’s presence always had a surprising effect on her. Sometimes, she made her agi
tated and annoyed. Other times, her presence was soothing.
“You might wish you had,” Cassia said. “He wants you to see a doctor.”
Cassia was squatting in front of David’s aquarium. It was a huge modern design constructed from an innovative material that eliminated glare, creating the impression that an invisible wall protected the fish from the outside air. She knelt behind the tank, and peered at Vriel through the glass, her magnified image out of place among the neon submarine and simulated kelp. Two
multicolored angelfish and one lumbering Oscar swam towards her palm, sucking at her through the glass. She returned the Oscar’s kiss, leaving a moist, pink stamp.
The tank had been empty when Vriel first moved in with David. They chose the fish together. Though his selections invariably died, hers thrived.
“How do you know so much about fish?” he said, as they flushed the latest casualty: an expensive Yellow Damselfish.
“My father was an Ichthyologist,” she said. “I never know when to believe you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I never lie.”
It became a kind of game for him to try to catch her in a contradiction. To break one of the casual oaths she frequently swore. They appeared to have no relationship to each other, either in their severity or trivialness, but each was uttered with an observed solemnity, as if her speaking and his hearing had a
binding affect. She knew that he kept score in a notebook identical to the one he had gifted to her. V’s do’s and don’ts it read in blue ink followed by: I don’t eat red meat, I’ll never get a driver’s license, I refuse to see a doctor, I never watch animated films and I don’t swim. So far the tally was Vriel five, David zero.
Cassia used a tissue to wipe her kiss from the glass, but the imprint lingered. Through its waxy stain, Vriel recalled her sister beckoning and sucking at the fish in the murky, salty waters of the marina, not far from their mother’s condo in Venice. Unperturbed by density or depth, clarity or tide, Cassia swam. As soon as she was wily enough to venture out on her toddling legs, she made for the ocean. Vriel was from the first afraid of sea water; the clutching rhythm of the waves, the lurking monsters hidden by the sand clouds and above all, the tingling arms of the seaweed blooming around the legs of the boardwalk.
Sycorax's Daughters Page 3
