Page 56 of The Salt-Black Tree
The mass on the bed—the husk of a divinity—crumbled inward. A sharp, red-tinged glitter dappled the walls with white, and the mouthless shadows cringed.
Dima Konets turned away, striding for the door. The backpack stopped struggling; there was nothing left in this room to call to its contents, however faintly.
“Sure you want to leave?” Baba called after him.
“Got what I came for.” He paused at the threshold, his head slightly turned. “In a tree, eh?”
“My next stop, so don’t get any ideas.” Baba leaned over the bed. Dry golden dust—the only remainder or reminder of Maria Drozdova—finished its ruin with a faint sibilant noise. Lodged just below where her ribcage had been, snuggling into her unmade vitals, was a nest of black twigs with a fierce bloody glitter caught in its throat. “Are you sure this is the game you want to play, Dima?”
“Went across the country twice.” He didn’t move just yet. “Be a shame to disappoint her,neh?”
A scratching, a sigh as golden dust faded on an icy breeze. A black bird large as a vulture, something like a raven, with bright crimson gleams in its intelligent eyes, hopped onto the windowsill. Dima finally looked back as it took flight into the freeze outside, a thunderclap of feathers and a soft, husky laugh.
The bed was empty. If something he wanted had been there, well, it was gone now.
So the thief ambled away, still picking with luxurious patience at black strands caught in his sharp, sharp teeth. Therewas business to attend to in town, his uncles and nephews needing direction, reminders, luck granted or withheld.
Plenty of time, now.
“Zaika moya, khoroshen’kaya devotchka,” he murmured as he walked unseen down the hall. “Come home soon.”
INCARNATION
Three days, the Midwife of Metairie said, for all who find the salt-black tree spend that long clasped in its arms.
The first passed slowly, amid hushed and steaming bayou. The heat never altered, no matter who ruled the season—Summer, Harvest, Winter, or Spring herself. A dry slithering like scales against the cinderfall rustled at odd intervals, the tree’s crusted trunk bulging uneasily as something inside it stirred.
There was rest in its embrace, certainly. As the first day wore to a close, the bulges and creaks subsided. Nothing struggled for long; hanging upside down inside the tree filled the head with rushing vision, pressure mounting behind the eyes, lungs heaving against gravity as the hanged body moved inward towards the tree’s core. Wooden rings creaked, parted, reformed as they absorbed something foreign.
The first night was black and bleak. Some few times a mortal had chanced across this place, driven by ambition or desire so great as to grant almost-divine strength. The crusted branches yearned, twisted by an awful pressure, begging for release.
None was granted.
A soft, lipless voice whispered in the ancient tongue every infant understands before birth.You could trade, you know.
The second day held the same breathless heat, but as dawn rose tiny crackles raced over rough, crusted bark. Moisture dripped. A scarlet tinge bloomed through salt, receded. Among the roots, tiny dabs of crimson rose.
Far to the north, in a city grasped by winter, the last rattling breath of a foreign divinity passed. A hush even deeper than usual fell over the cinder-mound and the salt-black tree. Carmine spatters touched its roots; its branches gleamed, charcoal full of evaporated ocean blooming with bright blood.
Deep inside the rings, a frantic pulse calmed. The struggling stopped. A woman who had once been a honey-haired girl went still, sensing… what?
Yes, ambition could bring you to the tree. Still, what was a plan, a scheme, a hunger to surpass but need? Necessity was the great driver.
All who came here had a wish.
Life is life. You could trade. Is that your desire?The language of the unborn was forgotten with an infant’s first breath, yet it was spoken here.
And understood.
Some, like a one-eyed child of the coldest north, wanted rune-knowledge. Some, like a deathless, paper-dry sorcerer, required power. Some, like a man with skin like midnight and a horrified gaze, sought freedom. Some, like a limping child with burn scars swallowing most of her skin, demanded vengeance. Some, like a midwife even divinities respected, simply tested themselves against mortality’s constraint.
Even a perishable human could pay what the tree demanded.
Hanging in blood-warm darkness, the querent heard a pulse. Occasionally a red glow reached through the rings, backlighting visions too excruciatingly personal to be described—determination, horrific memory, guilt.
And deep, endless shame.
The second night was full of half-heard motion. Unseen things swirled about the cinder-hill and its throbbing, crowning spike. Feathers brushed thick humid air, water rippled, a dry tearing slithered past before becoming the faint creak of wet scales drying, choke-distant screams, the soft panting of creatures pushed past suffering into simple mute endurance, the slight groaning exhalation of vegetation using the hours of darkness to grow.
