The old woman’s smirk quickly faded, replaced by disappointment. She stood there for a moment, rubbing her hands on her orange apron. Then she looked up at me and tipped her pointy witch hat with respect.
“I guess you really are the real deal,” said the old woman who was no longer intimidating, but rather appreciative.
“I told you,” said Sophia. “I brought a good one this time, didn’t I?”
Sophia held out her hand.
“I guess you did,” the old woman answered and then reached in her apron pocket and pulled out...I did a double take...the old woman pulled out a bean.
“Oooh, what is it this time?” Sophia giggled, taking the little white bean into her hand. “A horse, an elephant? Oh! You know what would be the ultimate reward? A woman! Yes, with big boobs, shapely hips, long silky hair, pouty lips and a nice round butt!”
I stood stunned.
“See for yourself,” said the old woman, more interested in me.
Sophia popped the bean into her mouth and swallowed. In seconds, her body began to change. Thousands of little black hairs sprouted from her face, neck and arms. Her eyes bulged so large and fast that I stepped backward in awe, worried they were going to explode. Sophia dropped to the floor on her hands and knees.
“What’s happening?” I backed my way against the exit.
The old woman placed her hand on the doorknob and turned. “What are the Four Horsemen, anyway?”
“Huh?”
“The Four Horseman,” she repeated, “I just ask the questions the queen gives me; don’t never know what they’re about.”
“What?” I said, confused and much more focused on Sophia whose face had distorted so horribly by now that I could hardly watch any longer. Something was sprouting from her back, ripping through the fabric of her bloodstained dress. Wings. Clear wings with little black veins.
I had forgotten the old woman’s question quickly. “She’s turning into...a fly?”
And then in a strange puff of smoke like a blown-out candlewick, Sophia was the size of a pinky fingernail.
“Bah!” said the old woman. “It’s a magic imp bean. Never know what new form each one contains, but then beggars can’t be choosers.”
She gestured, opening the door to the queen’s chambers, “Come on. It’s rude to keep the queen waiting.”
Sophia buzzed away in the opposite direction.
“Screw being the hero….”
--
THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER WAS beautiful, though odd, and vast from stone wall to stone wall and floor to ceiling. There were trees everywhere, rising up like pillars to hold up the scaling ceiling. Birds of all kinds flitted about, singing and squawking and hovering. Tiny red hummingbirds buzzed back and forth as we walked toward the queen’s great golden dais. Roots, marble, and gold made up the floor. This place was old, ancient like the places only read about in history books, or seen in documentaries.
It was a beautiful, wonderful place like a forest, yet not exactly so, with its odd atmosphere. Animals were not supposed to be like this, utterly uncaring of my presence. The birds weren’t supposed to hover a foot in front of me with strange smiling faces.
“No, have not seen one of those in many, many, many years, indeed,” said one red hummingbird just before buzzing off through the trees.
“Nor have I, Master Dishini,” said another.
“This way,” said the old woman, hurrying me along.
Amazed, my steps slowed almost to a stop.
The dais came fully into view. A grand golden stage where a throne made of winding roots glistened with sap sat proud and empty.
“Stand here,” the old woman said, stopping me.
I stood at the foot of the dais, looking up some six or seven massive steps.
The old woman went into an awkward bow and I thought that I probably should too, awkwardness and all.
“Did you bring your seed, Norman, Man of the Earth and son of Adam?”
Where the voice came from, I couldn’t tell. She was there, somewhere, somewhere close, not up above and not behind me, but right there on the dais. I looked to my left at the old woman as I slowly came out of my bow. She ventured back underneath the canopy of trees and stopped many feet away, waiting.
I swallowed hard. “Ummm,” I began nervously, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Walk the steps of the dais so that I may see your face in the light.”
Cautiously, I took the first two steps and then stopped dead. Sitting in a giant pot next to the throne-like tree was a plant that moved and breathed and spoke.
“A fine Man of the Earth you are,” she said with words so graceful and serene. Her deep green leaves moved fluidly as if a gentle breeze brushed them to give them animation. “Come closer, Giver of the Seed.”
I looked all around me before moving further, trying to sort out exactly what I was seeing and what my purpose here was. Before, I thought I knew, but now I wasn’t so sure.
I stepped up onto the dais and waited. A nervous, sickly feeling wrenched my chest.
“It has been too long to count the years anymore,” said the queen with lips of leaves. “Lucifer the Fallen has finally found one that can make it past the chamber door—it’s quite a funny thing.”
She paused to let me speak, but for now, it was hardly something I was capable of pulling off.
Another hummingbird buzzed by, followed by a foul-mouthed Blue Jay.
I paid no mind.
“Lilith’s time in Creation nears its end,” the queen began, “and you will help the Great Trees bear fruit once more. With the offering of your seed, I and my kin shall grow and be strong again, to set in motion the End of the Beginning and reverse the fate of the world.”
“...Uhh...okay,” I said.
“Tell me,” the queen said, reaching out a long stemmed arm and touching the side of my unshaven face. “What year is it in the Outside?”
I absently reached up to feel the spot her leaf left tingling. I was much taller than the queen, having to look down upon her in her great pot, but her stems seemed to grow and slither and sway when and where they needed, without difficulty.
“Well, it was 2011 when I left...hopefully it’ll be 2011 when I go back.”
“When you go back?” said the queen.
“Yes...,”
A stem snaked up the back of my neck, tickling me behind the ear.
“Perhaps you will,” she added with reluctance.
“Wait, what do you mean, perhaps?”
“I shall answer all of your questions once you do what it is that you came here to do.”
I truly didn’t know what to do. Surely, I wasn’t expected to have sex with a plant....
“Plant your seed within my pot and give me life again.”
I looked at her pot, watching the dark, moist soil move as her body moved underneath it and then I covertly glanced at my crotch.
“I-I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Ashes and earth will imprison the frail,” said the queen.
Two more stems grew long and found my face, caressing my dry lips with the soft curve of their aromatic leaves.
Ashes and earth.
I had heard that before. Oh yeah! Back in the alley, it was part of a riddle told by the twins.
“Blood of love?” I said, recalling the rest of the riddle.
The queen’s budding head nodded once, softly.
I thought about the riddle for a rather long and anxious time, but still I did not understand. Ashes and earth will imprison the frail, blood of love will lift the veil.
“I am allowed to tell you anything that I know, but I cannot tell you how to give me life.” She added, “It is forbidden.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I mumbled under my breath.
The queen retracted her slithering limbs slowly.
“When Man Fell, his eyes were opened, and to see then was to die,” she began. “The Garden of Eden and all within it, we too began to see and w
e withered and died until the great sun caught what was left of us aflame and then our ashes were covered by the earth. Over time, offerings from man have allowed me to grow again, but only the offering of a man’s seed will allow me to Be again.”
I was getting frustrated with myself.
I knelt and then sat at the queen’s level, knees bent underneath me. I could feel dead, crunchy leaves and grains of dirt underneath my palms.
“But I don’t understand what you need from me,” I said desperately. “Is it my blood?”
The queen’s leafy makeshift mouth smiled.
Ashes and earth will imprison the frail, blood of love will lift the veil.
I ripped through my thoughts, cursing myself quietly. What does it mean?
“The answer will take the breath right out of you,” the queen said.
Instantly, I thought of the anomalies in the Field of Yesterday.
Take the breath out of me? Blood of...
“...blood of love,” I continued aloud, “blood of the heart. That’s it; the seed is my heart....”
I paused, suddenly not excited about figuring out the riddle all on my own. “No, that can’t be right...right?”
“It is with the heart of a man, a true son of Adam, that the Tree of Life can live and Be again.”
I went to leave the dais, but the fat old woman stepped up to the end of the last stair. She looked at me with that scolding glass eye, thick cauliflower arms crossed tight over her large breasts.
The queen, voice still as soft as ever said, “You do not wish to offer your seed?”
“It’s, uhhh, not that. It’s just that—”
I dashed off the dais, knocking the old woman down on my way toward the chamber doors. Birds scattered. I ran as fast as I could, the heel of one floppy sandal bending under my foot, almost causing me to trip. I ran until I came to the door, bracing my hands upon it and pushing with all my strength.
The door did not budge.
I scrambled to find the way to unlock it, but it was a useless and embarrassing attempt.
A hand touched my shoulder from behind.
I turned and felt an eye-watering sting. I never actually saw the old woman’s fist soaring at me.
“You ever knock me over like that again,” said the fat old woman, “and I’ll make sure you go back to the Outside with the hands of a child molester and the tongue of a cannibal.”
I blinked through the burning behind my nostrils.
“Please, Norman,” said the queen from her pot upon the dais, “you need not fear anything here. I am the Tree of Life, and I can give life for I am the Hand of God.”
The old woman took me by the back of my tunic.
“No,” demanded the queen, “he must be willing.”
“I’m not willing to rip out my heart and put it in a pot of dirt!”
That doesn’t even make any fucking sense!
“You fear death?” said the queen.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do!”
“Why?”
“Why not?” I said with a corrosive laugh. “Maybe if I was like you I wouldn’t be afraid, but I’m not and I have every right to be scared shitless, especially considering...” There was a bitter twinge of mockery in those words.
“But why fear it if I can reverse it? I am the—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “You’re the Tree of Life and blah, blah, blah. Still doesn’t mean I’m gonna put my heart in your...pot-of-dirt.”
I threw my hands above me. “I’m really disappointed to be honest. I thought I was going to get to bang a queen, and as much as that thought terrified me because I worried you’d look like...well, like her,” I looked over at the fat, old woman who snarled back at me, “I still would’ve done it. But this—nope, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“You are not dead,” said the queen, green limbs swaying back and forth, stretching across the dais for no particular reason. “And it is not painful, is it?”
Confusion took over and then something told me to look down. There was a hole in my chest, just as it was in the Field of Yesterday when the anomaly held my heart in its hand. Only this time the old woman held it in hers. I gasped and fell to the floor, eyes rolling in the back of my head.
The punch to my face must have been the distraction she needed to reach out and rip it from my chest.
“Give it back to him,” the queen instructed. “You have done well to demonstrate, now give it back before he fades.”
The old woman grumbled something behind closed lips, hesitated and then bent over, placing my bloody, beating heart next to me on the floor. I reached out and grabbed it, but it slipped through my thumb and index finger and plopped back onto the floor. The old woman chortled standing over me.
I ignored her and scrambled for my heart, which seemed like the slipperiest thing I’d ever touched. By the time I had a good grip on it, I began to wonder how it was even that I was still alive, how I was able to scramble for anything at all. I sat up before finally going back into a stand, heart tightly in both hands, beating and constricting and very much alive.
I looked across the chamber at the queen up on the dais in her big pot.
“Death is nothing here when I am its adversary,” said the queen who now had a little white bulb sprouting from what was supposed to be her head.
I began to walk forward, carefully carrying my beating heart and watching every one of my steps so not to trip and fall and drop it all over again. It bothered me to think that I had already gotten it dirty.
“But then how can all those people out there die?”
“I give life to those who give it in return,” she said, “and I have only the strength anymore to sustain a select few. But to the one that comes to put an end to the Beginning, my strength is yours.”
I stared down at my heart and everything was silent. Not even the buzzing of hummingbird wings seemed audible, or my breathing, which was quite heavy and rapid despite my predicament.
“What do I do?” I said, breaking the quiet.
I went back towards the dais and ascended the golden steps toward the queen. I did only what made sense to do, and with my free hand, I began to dig. Hundreds of eyes were on me; the eyes of birds, deer, rabbits, squirrels, and every other living creature, all interested and intrigued, all watching the scene with the greatest curiosity. The old woman stood far away, wide-eyed and maybe even a little worried.
I dug until the depth of the hole passed my elbow. Carefully I lowered my heart down into the black soil. The queen moaned and began to move in a lithe swaying motion.
The queen began to grow higher. The soil in the pot rose and expanded until the pot burst and her roots grew longer, gripping the dais like giant fingers grabbing a handful of gold and marble only to crush it. The floor shook and vibrated. I crawled backward as far as I could go until the wall behind me forbade me to go any further. On my bottom and with my back pressed against the wall, I sat frozen and in awe.
The queen grew rapidly. Her plant-like body changed into the body of a tree with the shape of a woman, breasts and hips and a perfect little belly that was not too round, yet not too flat. Her arms were like a woman’s arms, but they grew longer and there were no hands or fingers, but branches and twigs. The queen seemed fused to her tree-like throne and the moment she touched it, it too began to move and grow, sprouting with vines and tiny red berries in bunches amid the fresh green leaves behind her. Her hair was also made of vines, which lengthened everywhere, gripping the walls and the floor and everything within more than twenty-feet of her throne. Where her legs would have been was one big, twisted root that extended out onto the floor and down the steps of the dais.
The queen stretched out her tree-limb arms and tipped back her head, letting out a noise of relief before settling back in her throne.
“A billion lifetimes it felt like,” she said looking at no one, “trapped as a seed until the first man came along and bled for me. But he wasn’t from the Outside
.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What’s the difference?” My question was simple, earnest, and not at all disrespectful.
I went to my feet, but kept my distance. Only now, for a brief second did I realize there was a beating heart in my chest again. It beat madly even in my fingers and in my ears.
“A dead man cannot give me life,” she began, now looking right at me with beautiful human green eyes, “but he can give his blood to sustain me. It was one like you, from the Outside who has not yet died, but who is nearly dead, that can offer his seed and allow me to be as I once was in the Beginning. The way God made me.”
“Go back to the part about me being nearly dead, please.”
“Ahh, yes,” the queen said with a delicate grin, “I thought that might be the part of my introduction that interested you the most.”
“I’m uhh, sorry, it’s just that—”
The queen reached out her right limb across the dais and laid her ‘hand’ on my shoulder. “It is fine,” she said, “You were sent here because somewhere on the Outside something happened to you, something terrible.” She stopped and looked upward as if in thought. “Come closer.” She withdrew her limb and curled one twig toward her like a finger.
I did as I was told.
The queen breathed in deep, taking in my scent, her eyes closed softly. I noticed that her eyelashes were made of tiny blade-like white petals.
“You were burned in a fire,” she said, opening her eyes, “You’re still clinging to life on the Outside, but as badly as you must have been burned, I don’t expect you’ll make it, or even want to make it, considering.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am incapable,” she answered softly.
“No....”
“I am sorry, but it is true. He can only send those who have crossed that line between life and death, only you are one of few to make it this far.”
I fell to my knees. I looked out in front of me but saw nothing except a distorted memory of the day in the park with the Devil. I remembered seeing the coils of black smoke rising over the trees. I could easily recall the sound of the fire trucks and ambulances, and the smell of smoke from the distant burning building that I now realized was the apartment complex I lived in eight blocks away.
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