To Bleed a Crystal Bloom

by Sarah A. Parker

I stop on the threshold and secure the bundle of caspun around my ankle, then step down into the spring.

  Unlike my pool, this one allows me to keep my feet on the ground for longer. Water laps at my breasts while I walk toward the wall that separates this place from Puddles, Rhordyn’s shirt swaying around me with the stirring water.

  Once I’m near, my gaze plunges into the deep where that hole is punched through the rock, allowing water to flow back and forth between this thermal spring and my own.

  I’m not sure I’ll fit through, but it’s my only option. If I wait for Rhordyn to return from his hunt, I have no doubt that boat will be forced to leave for the South without me.

  Cainon would be well within his rights to assume I’ve been held against my will.

  War would spark. A war that’s better spent on the real enemy—not some possessive bickering between two neighboring High Masters who seem determined to engage in a pissing contest.

  I draw a few big breaths, filling my lungs, fueling my blood and brain and austere resolve.

  One final, shuddering breath and I dive below the surface, propelling myself into the deep where it’s warm and dense, the light filtered and dim. My vision is hazy, and I feel around until I find the breach in the wall.

  Puddles is right there, on the other side.

  Weaving a hand through to test the size—the irregular shape—I realize how tight it’s going to be ...

  The thought is dismissed in the very next second.

  There’s no room for uncertainty.

  I thread one arm through at a time and flatten my hands against the wall. Bulbs of anticipation burst in my belly as I shove—only to ricochet backward from the snag of my hips.

  They’re too wide.

  The haunting knowledge lands a blow to my chest, knocking a bout of air from my lungs. Mind scrambling, white-hot panic boils my blood, and my movements become frantic.

  I push, and push, and push, shoving hard, legs churning, finally letting out a squeal that’s distorted by water that feels too thick.

  Too hot.

  My limbs grow numb and heavy, and my chest starts to jerk, running out of breath.

  I need to get out.

  I bend at the hips, using my knees to propel myself in the direction I came in ... but my shoulders snag, the momentum slamming the back of my head against stone, pushing another burst of bubbles up my throat.

  Emptying me.

  Mind spinning, I lose track of which way is up.

  Which way is down.

  I lose control of my limbs and lungs, trapped on the threshold between two very different forms of captivity.

  The realization comes, sudden and violent, that I’m going to die. That my lungs won’t pull another breath, and I’ll be found here, wedged in a hole because I fought to escape a man who’s put a roof over my head since I was too small and young to fend for myself.

  A man who saved me from the grisly wrath of three Vruks that should have torn me to shreds.

  My subconscious roars to life in those final, frantic moments when my heart slows and my body begins to spasm. In its wakefulness, it tosses little slices of memory at me in a random, disjointed manner.

  There’s grass beneath my feet, sun on my face, a house in the distance blowing smoke from its chimney.

  I like that house. I like the vines stuck to its walls and the way the sun touches it.

  Home.

  I see that little boy again, except he’s not so little compared to me. He’s sitting on the lawn amongst a patch of pretty flowers—legs crossed, hands stretched in my direction.

  Reaching.

  “You can do it! Just push your arms out like you’re flying and slide your foot forward ...”

  I peep down at my feet, up again.

  He nods. “You’ve got this, little one.”

  He’s smiling at me, and I want to go to him.

  I shuffle, lift a foot, step over a yellow flower ... look up again.

  That smile is so much bigger now. “You’re doing it, Ser! Momma’s gonna be so proud of you!”

  My knees wobble, and I fall, but he catches me—always catches me.

  His laughter spills over my face as I’m tickled into a ball, and I feel true happiness burst inside my belly.

  Why did I bury this memory so deep? I want to live in it forever ...

  Our laughter echoes until it sputters out, and I’m no longer in the field with cheeks sore from giggling. I’m in a cozy room I recognize. One that smells like yummy things and makes me feel safe, but it looks strange from down here, where I’m huddled in the corner under the eating table.

  I make a sound, feel something wet slide down my cheek, but the little boy puts his hand over my mouth and holds me tighter.

  “Shh. It’s okay,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ll look after you. Always.”

  But I don’t think it’s okay.

  There are lots of strange people in the room. I can see their dirty boots from under the tablecloth—can hear their mean voices.

  They’re making my heart scared.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please, get out of my home and leave me to finish my meal in peace!”

  Mommy.

  Why is her voice mad?

  “There are three meals on the dining table ... Search the room!”

  Feet move, heavy things go sliding across the floor, bits of paper land everywhere, and someone steps on the picture I was painting for the boy holding me tight.

  A hand drops down and picks it up.

  Paper rips, and I feel the sound somewhere in my chest.

  The boy slides me against the wall, then puts a finger to his lips for me to be quiet. He’s holding something sharp, and I think he might be scared like me because his hand is shaking.

  I reach for him.

  He turns away at the same time the table flips, making me cry out.

  There are people everywhere, but the ones I know are in the corner crying.

  I’ve only ever seen them happy.

  Other people are dressed in gray, and they have strange marks on their foreheads. They’re looking at me with angry eyes that make me want to hide again, but there’s nowhere else to go.

  No.

  No more.

  I’ve seen these people on my wall ... In pieces in my nightmares. I know what’s coming, and I don’t want to watch them get feasted on.

  But my subconscious is strong, and I’m weak ... dying.

  It holds my eyes open and forces me to look.

  The scary, angry people step closer, yelling things I don’t understand, pointing fingers.

  One of them has my mommy. Sparkly tears are dripping down her cheeks. Maybe she needs a cuddle?

  “Mommy ...”

  Her face crumbles.

  A big man walks toward me and the boy. His head is shiny, and there’s one of those wood-cutting things hanging from his hand. I think it’s called an axe.

  Why is there red stuff dripping from it?

  “No! Please! I beg you, they’re only kids!”

  I don’t like the way Mommy’s voice sounds. It makes my eyes sting.

  The man looks at the boy. “Get out of the way, kid. Mercy is not preserved for those who stand against the stones.”

  The boy runs forward with the sharp thing held above his head. His scream stands out the most ... until Mommy makes a louder sound at the same time the axe is swung.

  He stops.

  I push to my feet, try to follow ...

  Watch him fall.

  Watch the light leave his eyes.

  I take one, two, three whole steps, then slip on the sparkly stuff spilling from the hurt in his chest. But he doesn’t catch me. The tickles never come.

  Mommy keeps screaming, louder and louder.

  I crawl through the wet, curl up beside him, and wait for him to blink ...

  Smile ...

  Laugh ...

  For him to stop looking at the wall and tell me everything’s goin
g to be okay.

  Big, strange hands pull me away from his warmth, and my nightgown is ripped, the top of my arm poked over and over.

  I kick, wriggle, scream—louder than Mommy and the squealing sounds in my ears.

  Put me down ...

  Put me down!

  But the words don’t sound the same as they do in my head because I never needed to speak. He did it for me; somehow knew what I wanted to say.

  And now he’s broken on the floor in a puddle of wet.

  I feel something inside me growing from the place where my heart is, and it hurts ...

  It hurts so much I think I’m going to crack open and everyone will see my insides.

  I think I’m broken, too.

  The memory shifts—an ocean pulling back into itself before another wave strikes.

  The roof caves, someone screams, and all I can smell is pain; burnt pain that makes me want to spew.

  I’m watching from the outside, no longer in my child-body.

  Nothing is.

  It’s all escaping through the splits in my skin and my eyes and my ears and my wide-open mouth—an oily blackness spilling out in vicious, torrential spears.

  Burning.

  Silencing.

  Seeping through the ground and melding with the dirt.

  The floor is gone, so are the walls. The roof is in smoldering piles, making the night glow red.

  I’m in the center of it all, as if the world is rushing away from my body contorted in the dirt.

  My clothes are burnt.

  I can’t see my mommy anymore.

  All I can see are bits of bodies everywhere, big and small, scattered all over the ground as if they were flung like rag dolls that fell apart mid-flight. Some have upside down v’s carved into their foreheads, others are the people who changed my bed sheets and cooked me yummy food.

  The power did not pick and choose. It just ... did.

  It killed.

  The thought jerks me into consciousness.

  I kick forward, my body now at a slight angle that allows me to slide further through the hole. A jagged piece of rock drags a line of fire from my hip to my knee as I wiggle out, freeing myself from the chewing jaws of stone.

  Bubbles pour from my mouth, racing me to freedom.

  I explode through the surface—choking, spluttering, heaving breath into my starved lungs. Breath that tries, and fails to temper the storm lashing my conscience.

  Wading to the edge, I crawl out on hands and knees, drawing life into myself while grating layers of skin from my shins.

  I barely feel the sting.

  Barely notice the squealing bathers dashing from the pools, snatching their clothes, and running up the stairs as if they see the truth in my eyes.

  See me for what I really am.

  I make it almost to the wall before I vomit, the spill of water and bile having nothing to do with my almost drowning and everything to do with my sudden wave of vertigo from the fall.

  Because I’m no longer standing on the edge of that chasm deep in the folds of my subconscious. I’m down in the guts of it, trying to claw my way out with desperate, bloody fingers.

  Trying to escape the slew of ebony roots coiled in a sizzling slumber—the pile larger than life itself.

  An oily blackness spilling out in vicious, torrential spears.

  Burning.

  Silencing.

  I vomit again, my body repelling the septic revelation it’s being forced to swallow ...

  It was me.

  Murder guts you, leaving nothing but an animated shell. I realize that while I sit, balled on the wet ground, rocking back and forth in a puddle of my own bile.

  All these years, I’ve been hiding from myself. Functioning without a pulse.

  The Vruks didn’t slaughter everyone that day. They simply caught the scent of a sizzling meal and came running to gorge on the carnage I created.

  Me. A tiny, two-year-old child.

  I rock and rock and rock, ripping at my hair, clawing at my arms, my neck, my scalp ...

  Me.

  There is no pretty way to paint over all that ugly.

  I severed my tether to humanity at the tender age of two—lost control and butchered not only the people who broke into our home and took my brother from me, but also the servants, the cooks ... my mother.

  I murdered my mother ...

  I shudder, dry heave, pray it was a swift and painless death.

  Pray she didn’t suffer.

  Her scream echoes through my mind; the sound she made when the axe was swung—

  Of course she suffered. She watched her son bleed out, then saw her daughter turn into a monster.

  Watched me die in a different way.

  Rhordyn took me in and dressed me as a lamb, not realizing I’m actually the wolf. Except my weapons aren’t fangs and claws, but an inky fire so noxious it severs—leaving fleshy, bubbled bits that weep their life.

  My rocking becomes so violent my bare skin grates across the stone.

  No wonder the people in Whispers haunt me. That their perusals burn. No wonder part of me tried so hard to put them back together.

  I thought the unintentional paintings were my gift for the ones who lost themselves that day, but it was an overflowing well of guilt worming its way out of me in any way it could. Forcing me to look.

  So many faces.

  So many wide-eyed, condemning stares.

  Murderer ...

  A strangled sound claws out of me, raw and roughly hewn.

  Did my subconscious create my Safety Line as a way to cage me in? Perhaps it considered me best kept isolated should I lose control again?

  And what if that does happen? Do all the people who run the estate end up being torn to bits—their scorched remains scattered throughout the castle halls? Does Baze?

  Rhordyn?

  I release a low, throaty whimper.

  They call me a child-survivor, when I’m actually their unbridled demise just waiting to unleash.

  I need to atone for everything I’ve done, and I can’t do that if I’m tucked high in the clouds.

  No.

  All I’m achieving here is to waste my life, living in a protective bubble I don’t deserve—one that could burst at any moment, be it from the inside or the out.

  Cainon’s proposal was much more of a gift than I realized. Fate is giving me a chance to save lives, and I refuse to look at it any other way. It’s too late to go back and change things, so I’ll have to do what I can with what little I’ve got ...

  A blue and gold cupla.

  I claw up the edge of that mind-chasm, heaving and bruised, broken and bloody. There’s not a single part of my insides that isn’t ugly, so unlike the real me hiding beneath this skin I wear.

  The irony isn’t lost on me.

  Landing on the ledge, I tamp that gulf full of enough shadow to smother the pile of slumbering death and spin, shutting off my mind’s eye.

  Refusing to look at the past again.

  I lift my head, teeth chattering, body trembling.

  I have to go.

  Rolling forward onto skinned knees, I scoop water from the edge of the spring, using it to wash my face and legs and the bile from the ends of my hair. I remove the calico package from around my ankle and stand, wavering on unsteady feet.

  My vision splits, collides. Splits, collides ...

  I draw a deep breath and take one step toward the stairs, then another, until I reach the wall and can use it as a crutch. Tentatively, I begin the climb, legs shaking beneath my weight. But I push myself, feeling my body grow a little stronger with every inhale.

  It’s not until I’m halfway up the chute that I realize Rhordyn’s shirt is ripped, exposing my right thigh and a long, fleshy wound that’s dribbling blood.

  “Shit,” I mutter, glancing down the stairs, seeing a peppered trail of red everywhere my foot has been.

  I’ll have to bind that before I can go anywhere.

  I exit the stai
rwell and hobble down the hallway, every unsteady step bringing me closer to Rhordyn’s inevitable return.

  If he finds me like this, I’m screwed. He’ll probably chain me to a wall somewhere and bark at me until I scream my truth.

  My heart skips a beat, and I double my speed, shoving myself into a jog—teeth gritted, fists bunched.

  Pushing past the zap of pain that lances up my leg every time it drives forward, I practically fly up Stony Stem, rounding on the echoes of an argument. Vanth and Kavan are at my closed door, doused in blood and rain, throwing profanities back and forth. Their disagreement comes to a silent crescendo the moment they notice me standing four steps below, and they almost leap out of their boots.

  Seriously, worst guards ever.

  Kavan looks me up and down, wide eyes settling on my bloody thigh. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “You’re bleeding,” Vanth proclaims, as if it isn’t obvious. “And dressed in a man’s shirt.”

  I ignore his righteous tone and shove past. “We’re leaving,” I rasp, pushing the door open, tossing the month supply of caspun on my bed.

  “What?” they bellow as a clap of thunder shakes the tower, followed by a flash of light that etches everything in an eerie brilliance.

  Ignoring the calamity the sky is unleashing, I wrap my hair in a knot on my head, using a large pin to prod it in place before rifling through my drawers for something to bandage my bloody thigh.

  “Mistress!”

  Kavan’s use of the title makes me bristle. In truth, I’d forgotten they were there.

  “The boat,” I snip, tearing a strip free of a tattered shirt. “We’re sailing for the South. Now.”

  Vanth snort-laughs, though the sound is barren of humor.

  I spin. “Something funny?”

  “Yes, actually. You’ve been stalling for the past few days, and you choose now to leave? Have you even looked outside?” He points out the western window. “Only someone with a death wish would sail in that weather.” His eyes narrow. “Unless you want our ship to sink ...”

  “Why would I wan—” I shake my head, dismissing his condemning tone. “Look. We either sail now or you can return to the Bahari capital with nothing but this,” I say, shoving my shackled wrist in his direction. “Because once Rhordyn gets back from his hunt, I’m stuck here. For good.”

  My attention darts between the two, and I wait.