Monday, 20 April 2009

• Currently Child of the Prophecy (The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Book 3) By Juliet Marillier see related

  In Progress.

  

  Audrey Kawasaki © 2009 Visit her @ http://www.audrey-kawasaki.com/ .
  

  Down to the cellar and he found her, curled up among the cans of oil and bags of flour, the dirt floor damp beneath her, not from tears or blood or piss, instead with salt and sea, though it lay nowhere near where they lived together. He knelt to meet her slowly for she was little more than feral and terrified of him. He could see it in the way she dug her fingers into the dirt becoming mud becoming sea.

  In the kitchen the floor was still covered with broken egg and feathers. On the counter there was almost dough. In the stove an almost fire. Embers burned but didn't ignite, and somewhere underneath the floorboards, rolled and wrapped in twine, lay her almost escape. He'd have to move it tomorrow. He'd clean the mess tomorrow but then, just then, he knelt, and talked in whispers, sweet love notes. Words she did not understand, a song she'd heard so many times she heard it even when she screamed for hours, eyes screwed shut and throat raw and bleeding even, but still that song. She began to growl.

  He left and came back with a blanket. A bowl of stew. He left again.

  By then the crow was stiff. The eyes were dull. He wondered if he should take the heart, the liver, the bones, but decided against it until he moved the skin. By then, the things he might have wanted would have spoiled, so he left it at the back door for the wolves. He cleaned the egg and feathers, saving only four for her. A necklace, maybe. A fine thing. He checked the lock and satisfied, he brought the fire back to life.

  It had only been two weeks. Only two, he told himself. Not so long. And it would go this way for a while. That was why he had to move the skin, and soon. She was just as the bird, the wolves. Worse for all her night dark hair and eyes. Human coming, but still not there.

  She picked the carrots from the stew with muddied hands. In the dark she tried again to talk to them. She sent out motions and colors, tastes and sounds, but nothing came back. She was too far away, and what little of the ocean she could call to her was not enough. Not enough to disappear, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She stretched her legs and toes and fingers and tried not to hate them. When she thought of the him up there, it was a tangle of things she'd known, but never really what he was. He was hunter, and teeth, seaweed catching and storming waters to confuse her.

  Upstairs the flying fish had come to her, had hopped across the hardened not sand, scratching at it with tiny claws a fish was not supposed to have. Her eyes were starving for it. She watched it stop a lay away, and turn its head to stare, fins too big, and soft. In water it would fail. And she would eat it. But here, she wasn't certain. Here she was almost afraid, but for the grace of its neck and silent shuff of scales. It watched her while the hunter bent to make the hot that hurt, and while he couldn’t see, it hop-fluttered across and to a place where light did not quite reach. Its beak was quick and suddenly in among the cracks, pulling and prying and she was curious too.

  And then he was upon them. He was twisting the neck in his hands as the eggs hit the floor, and then, suddenly, she was being pushed down the narrow steps into the cool and dark almost sea and though falling, she was still glad to be out of all the light and hot and anger.

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