Page 57 of The Salt-Black Tree
The third dawn rose sanguinary instead of gray, and the wet womblike heat was nothing short of brutal. A shimmer roped about the tree’s gnarl-knotted roots, the spent gleaming skin of some unimaginably large, legless reptile. The salt-black tree burned unconsumed, and smoke rose from the cinder-hill, mixing with the water’s misty exhalation.
It is time.Though the tongueless voice held no impatience, its command could not be denied.Speak your choice.
But no, the burning was not wholly flame. Scarlet anemones bloomed from the black, crusted trunk, fragile petals refusing to flutter free.
Even the mortal, the perishable, the weak could choose here. This last refuge stripped the powerful and granted to the powerless, humbled the proud and comforted the broken. Surcease could be found here, a trade for a beloved, revenge for a wrong too large to be righted even by Justice’s long, sharp, blindly moving arc.
But in return, the salt-black tree demanded truth.
Another voice spoke. It would be familiar to a dark-haired thief or a mute father who was once a prince, known since birth by a golden-haired divinity who hated its every syllable. It was familiar to the black bird circling above the tree, waiting and casting a vulture-shadow upon the cringing mist.
“I want…”A long, hitching breath. The anemones stirred, petals rippling under a hurricane that did not touch the fog or smoke.
When a storm is purely internal, not a single leaf stirs. And yet, the change is there. It exists.
“I want… to…”
Blood-colored flowers waved in agony. The tree bore down ruthlessly, squeezing the very deepest truth from its inhabitant. The great cardinal-dipped secret known to magician, divinity, and fool:KNOW THYSELF.
“I want to live!”Nat Drozdova howled, and the anemones exploded. Petals shifted, transformed as they were torn free.
Butterflies. Hundreds, thousands of gem-bright motes whirledfree, their quick-drying wings the color of fresh arterial spray. They cut through rising smoke and skimmed the water, ruffling the mist, each tiny creature liable to crushing by any passing predator.
But together, in a suffocating cloud, they were deadly in their own right. Wicked proboscises, needle-sharp, could puncture even the thickest skin; the flock could drain what it wished in bare moments.
They whirled in a cloud, then spread, winking out one by one. A faint scent of jasmine lingered, cutting through smoke. The salt-black tree bulged, a long moist rip opening in its side.
Headfirst, the Drozdova tumbled free. She landed on the cinder-shore, slick-wet, naked, and vomited a gout of golden ichor. Curled around herself, her ribs expanding, the divinity—for such she was now, incarnated and sealed, Spring in all her glory from her tumbled curls to her flexing rosy-nailed toes—sucked in the first breath of her new existence.
And she screamed as the newly born must, while a shadow swelled over her and a black bird, somewhere between a crow and a vulture but too large for either, dove.
CONSOLATION, NOT YET
“Steady,” a dry, half-familiar voice said. “It’s a bit of a shock, I know. Take your time.”
Torn from floating, amniotic warmth, Nat bent over and retched again. Baba de Winter’s hand on her arm was strong but didn’t bite; the grasp was strangely comforting. The fact of Nat’s own nakedness wasn’t, but after… what she’d just done, it didn’t seem very important.
At all.
A dry, translucent snake-shed curled around the tree’s roots; Nat heard the brush of a million tiny wings. Power flooded her, as natural as the lung-filling she was struggling to accomplish. Baba’s free hand struck a pale back between winged shoulder blades, a pitilessly accurate slap shocking a newborn into the duty it would perform until it could lay down the burden of existence.
Breathing. And with the exhale came a long cheated howl.
“It’s noooooot heeeeeeeere!” the Drozdova screamed, the salt-black tree rocking from the force of the cry. She bent over, gold-tinged damp drying on flawless skin. “Not here not here nooooooot heeeeeere!” Then, a long final scream.
“Moooooooooooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
Baba, her unpainted mouth tight, simply held the other woman’s arm. There was no solace for this grief; it could havebeen eased through in stages as a native divinity slowly learned what she would supplant, and how lonely it would be.
Instead, the slice was swift and absolute, cutting to the quick. A sobbing child mourned what she should have had, knowing full well what she had been granted instead.
There was power in knowledge; eventually there would even be consolation. But not quite yet.
Sobs wracked a divinity’s divine daughter; Baba de Winter’s slim, iron-strong arms eventually enfolded her. The beldame stroked the young woman’s wildly curling honey hair, gold highlights deepening as birthfluid was brushed free. Baba even hummed a soft tune incongruous to her angular black-wrapped frame, a lullaby brought to these shores by immigrants packed in stinking holds. They fled for many reasons, from fear to the bright desire for something better, and they brought so much with them.
Yet they ached with loss, just as all expelled from the familiar do.
Elsewhere in the bayou wind whipped water both fresh and salt to a froth, bent trees before its fury, loosed gouts of cold, stinging rain. Lightning stabbed, and the ozone smell of rage accompanied deep wallowing thunder. It was the type of storm which usually appeared as winter faded, and old folks watched the sky balefully while the younger, less wise, were caught in the downpour.
