One of us is an addict..one of us is a fraud. One of us is haunted. One of us is a monster, one a killer, one a liar. One of us is a predator, one of us a prince. One of us is a seductress. One of us is damned. All of us are killers.
Some secrets sh...
There once was a gardener in Halifax who walked on the green one evening and found a dozen, little fairies dancing merrily about a plum tree. They invited him to join. But when he did, he stepped all over them in a graceless way, and they took off his feet instead.
"Vice is a bitch," said Mother, "be the same as the fairies, by God. Nary a moment of dance, and she'll have ye on yer knees."
But God had nothing to do with it. And not all fairies were little, some were quite tall. Indifferent as the stars, yet clutching like a fresh-spun spider's web.
I've known one in my short life.
And I had a tree once, too.
I am the girl in the blue dress you see before you, lying dead on the carpet, sea foam at my lips.
And Vice isn't a bitch.
Death is.
+ + +
Judas-trees didn't grow on the moors. There was the scalding cold to consider, and the unsettled rain. Trees like that need a warmer climate, not marshes or flooded coves, so how one came to be outside my bedroom window—tucked into the heath and the boggy ground—was a mystery. God, were he to play a part, did it on purpose. He knew it'd scratch at my window, stealing my wits in the dark, drawing pictures on the shutters, tapping out my name until my limbs quaked like branches and my heart softened, run round by the rings of my soul.
Then, one day that changed, suddenly, and without regard for life or limb, and I learned there were worse things to fear than trees and shadows:
War and Death.
And it became that tree I visited in the Nodding. A crooked, sturdy fiend from memory; with roots that fed on ankle bones, churning them like butter. It had no leaves. Only black bark and flowers, sharp as welled-up pinpricks in the bleak corners of my mind. In the Nodding, my Judas-tree grew on a beach scaled in shingles. The sand hardpacked underfoot. The waves hissed. Tormented. Bashing their heads again and again against unyeildy boulders to no end—
In the Nodding, the sky was old-ash gray, and I walked alone in my damp silks beneath it, through the sea-frets that blew impudently by, hiding the coastline under its skirts. I walked for miles that way, blinded. My bare feet bleeding the color of those Judas-flowers into the angered waves. Nothing existed there, except me and the tree.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Me the tree and peace.
And then one day, that changed, too.
+ + +
"Miss?"
The sea. I could hear it. Hushing faintly beyond billowing curtains. But it wasn't my sea. I was far from it here, in this place of vexing color and glib noise. The double-doors that led to the veranda had stood open all evening, allowing the warm night air a turn about the dining room. With it, traipsed the scent of burnt wood. On it, I could hear the sea that wasn't my sea, crying.
