Honey Roots

by Sydney Migues

  Mrs. Jackson, who had heard his drunken screams, rounded the corner of the house just in time to see him throw his faded silver lighter, flame burning brightly, to the ground, where it quickly followed the trail of liquor he had left behind, setting everything in its path aflame.

  Thinking only of her precious son, who was trapped within the now burning woods, she had pushed her husband into the wall of fire that had erupted before them, where the deep red flames quickly engulfed his body, which was permeating with liquor.

  She had ignored his dying screams as easily as one ignores an ant of the sidewalk, as she raced inside to phone the fire department desperate to save the only place she could see her long lost son alive.

  Though she had done all she could do, she had unfortunately failed.

  I awoke to a cloudy haze, night had already come and gone since the fire had passed. I was now considered a missing person, who was more than likely nothing but ash now, the police had warned my mother.

  I laid naked in the hole that the towering oak that birthed Silas from its core had left behind, my body wrapped in a loose fetal position in the dirt, blanketed in the same warm bright moss that had covered Silas. Directly in the center of my badly burned moss-covered body, protected from the world by the curl of my body around it, was the small green sprouting of an oak tree.

  As my eyes began to adjust to the world around me, I could see through the thin layer of warm moss that now covered by face, that the little sprout and me where the only souls left living in what had once been a beautiful and magic wooded kingdom.

  I began to rub the moss away from my face, using my moss-covered hands, and to my surprise it easily melted away at my touch, turning into the blue galaxy of lava and disappearing into the fragilely small roots of the oak sprout. The scream I had been about to omit became caught in my throat as I watched the sprout suddenly shoot upwards as the blue substance disappeared into the soil it was planted in.

  I knew there was no point in making sound, that he would not be there to hear me.

  Silas had once again, become a tree.

  The last memory I had was of being stuck under the water, the hot flames of the burning trees trapping me in the creek. I had no memory of being pulled out of the water, or rolling my body into the shallow hole the oak had left behind, but I was sure it had been Silas.

  He had sacrificed himself and saved me, I believed. Unless I too had died, and this smoldering burnt utopia that now surrounded me was what life after death looked like.

  I continued to push the moss away from my skin as I kneeled above the little oak sprout, watching it grow with every layer I poured into the soil around it. By the time I had finished clearing the bright green tendrils from the burnt flesh of my legs, the little sprout had become taller than me, four large neon green leaves that seemed to be made of the moss itself hung over my head, shading me from the light of the sun as I continued pushing the blanket of moss away from me and into the surface of the little tree. When I had pushed nearly all of it off my skin, the tree was now a towering six feet, it stood alone awkwardly in the vast burnt woods around it.

  Though I scratched and pulled with all my strength, a few small patches of green staid clung to my tender skin, as if they had grown straight from my very flesh, just as they had on Silas. The most noticeable patch, covering my lips like a professionally applied thick green lipstick.

  I kissed the bark of the growing tree that I was now sure held the soul of my love, pressing the green mossy surface of my lips against the smooth cold bark, which turned rugged and scratched my chin and the tip of my nose as the tree began to tower, propelled into growth by the strength of my kiss.

  When I pulled back it was twice the size of me, and I wondered then, if I had stayed just a little longer, would I have had Silas back five years sooner, was the growth this quick the last time?

  I pressed my lips into the rough bark again, but this time nothing happened. Discouraged and confused, I backed away to the creek to tend to my burns.

  Though the burnt remains of the woods still smoldered all around me, they could have never prepared me for what I would find in bed of the creek.

  In place of the cool shallow water I had expected to find, that had been flowing through this space as far back as I could remember, was now a honey like substance, its thick melted surface shining in the light of the sun. The honey substance was lower than the water of the creek had been, and cast a sparkling golden rainbow of colors on the now bare and scorched walls of the creeks bed.

  I wanted to jump in its warm golden glow, suddenly yearned to let the thick substance devour me.

  I bent over and touched the tip of my finger to its shiny surface, I thought it would feel sticky, as it looked, but instead it was hard and smooth as glass, radiating with the warmth of dark pavement on a hot day. It burned the charred flesh of my fingertips as I touched it, repelling me back into the ashy ground behind me. I could see from where I now crouched in pain that the honey substance was coming from the burnt trees that laid across the creeks narrow edges. The shiny yellow substance still hung from them, as if stopped in time, reaching towards the creeks bed below

  I rolled around in hysterical agony in the ashes of the woods, turning my skin black like the remains of the trees around me. I cried for the woods, now a vast burn scar in place of the magical kingdom of yellow they had once been. I cried for Silas, for not knowing if he would come back again, despite the quick growth of new oak. I cried for my mother, and for Silas’s mother, remembering the sound of their desperate screams from the edge of the woods as they pictured their only children burning alive. I cried for myself, for my burnt and raw flesh that ached horrifically. For my stupid decision of pissing off Silas’s father, whom I cried for too, despite the pure evil I know knew he was made of.

  I cried and rolled my burning body in the hot ashes, until finally too exhausted to move, I fell asleep in the smoldering remains of the woods I had loved. Uncaring if I ever woke up again.

  I awoke to the dawn of morning, cold and alone.

  The woods around me now appeared dark and sinister in their demolished state. The single oak tree had also not grown anymore I saw with disappointment. I wondered why I was still here, not just here on this earth, alive, as I was pretty sure I still was, but here alone in these burnt woods. Where was my mother, Silas’s mother? Had they simply seen my charred ashy body in an unmoving heap on the earth and left me to rot? Or had they simply never bothered looking for me at all, so sure that I was dead already?

  “Mom?!”

  I called up into the silence of the hillside that now looked awkwardly shrunken without its vast balcony of green and gold. There was no answer, I tried three more times, but each time the only sound that came back to me was the desperate raspy echo of my own voice.

  My throat had become so dry and cracked that I was sure if looked at in bright lighting that it would more closely resemble the scorched bark of the fallen trees than of normal human flesh. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it was some sort of universal karma, when Silas died, he got to become a pretty tree, but when I died I was just a zombie made up of hair and ash. The thought passed quickly however, as the pain in my stomach and aching dryness of my cracked tongue reminded me I was still very much alive, and seemingly very much human.

  The journey up the hillside felt as if it took days to complete, the ground was still hot as a fresh flame on my heavily burnt and bare feet. I had to stop every few steps, balancing my raw hands against the hot earth as my head spun dangerously.

  When I finally made it inside the house, I could tell immediately that it was empty, and felt as if it had been for some time. The lack of my mother’s presence permeated our home like a rain cloud, chilling me as I tip toed through the dim and empty rooms.

  “Where are you?” I wondered aloud.

  I stepped into the cold water of the shower without turning on the lights, allowing it to run over my body and sooth my badly burned flesh. I held my
mouth up towards the nozzle, not even drinking the water, but simply allowing it to run down the dried raw interior of my mouth and throat. I could feel my tongue become normal again, I was able to finally move it against my teeth I realized, as I gratefully choked and sputtered on the icy liquid.

  Showers are a strange place, they have a tendency to reveal all that is hidden in the outside world, mentally and physically. Bruises and cuts, which are all but invisible in the light of day, or under a stark lightbulb, shine bright within the slick walls of a shower. Thoughts flow away down the drain, as the water contains you in the safety of its streams, and makes you reimagine, reinvent. Causes you to see things as you could not outside of its protective embrace.

  Showering in the dark however, is a different experience entirely. The darkness engulfs you, invades every inch of your mind casting out the light of even your own thoughts. You become one with the water, let it wash you anew and renew you into the light a changed soul.

  This dark thoughtless encompassment is what I had craved when I walked past the light switch and directly into the small blue shower stall, I needed the empty void I knew it would create if only I gave myself over to it. I needed time away from myself, needed to not feel all that was so overwhelming.

  The gentle shimmer of blue light cutting through the darkness prominently announced that I would find no escape here.

  In the disorienting darkness of the shower stall I thought for a moment that somehow Silas was there with me, that he simply hid behind the wall of cool water, glowing from within as he always did now. I reached out, touching the smooth walls on either side of me, feeling more alone than I ever had before. I just wanted to retreat, to hide and to not think or feel or see or wonder anymore.

  As I reached down to twist the shower knobs off, my gaze was quickly diverted to my flat scorched stomach, which now glowed a soft blue from within as Silas’s had.

  My first reaction upon seeing the soft blue light glowing from within my core, was to rip the flesh of my stomach open, to slice myself in two, and let the liquid pour out as the life faded from my eyes. This unexpected reaction alone, was enough to scare me into the light.

  The soft fluorescent glow from the red lamp on my bedside table appeared to harness all the light from the sun as I clicked it on, it blinded me, causing me to trip over my bed and onto the floor, where I laid defeated, staring at the scorched and bubbling remains of my skin.

  The flesh that covered my body now bore a closer resemblance to the skin of an elephant than that of a human, and rose up in small white bubbling blisters like hot goosebumps. The soft tan carpet in my room, that I had once loved the feel of more than anything in the universe, now felt abrasive and scratchy against my raw body.

  I decided to avoid the mirror all together, assuming my face would appear even worse than the hot red surface of my thighs.

  I hovered on the ground, unsuccessfully trying to keep the carpet from burning me even further. I had never felt so weak, so close to death as I did in this moment. I needed my mother, but she was nowhere to be found. I also most likely needed some immediate medical attention, but the blue glow coming from within my stomach would be a little hard to explain to a doctor.

  I needed Silas, but he was gone again. The thought flooded my mind with a fresh wave of despair.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fourteen days had gone by since the fire had burned its way into my life. My mother had never returned, and upon inspecting Silas’s old house, I found that it looked as if his parents had been missing for quite some time too.

  Our homes were the only two for miles, causing me to feel as if I were the only person left on the entire earth in my seclusion.

  I was afraid to go back into the woods, to see the scorched remains again, to relive losing Silas all over again. Or worst of all, be reminded of the strong urge to slice open my stomach and pour the dully lit blue liquid within onto the ground, where I hoped it would flow back to Silas.

  I had secluded myself from the world with so much purpose in the years before that I had no one I could call, no one who I could run to for help. I was stranded, and now I was also beginning to run out of food. So, I did the only logical thing I could think of, and called aunt Molly.

  My first thought when she answered was that I shouldn’t have held the phone so close to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Aunt Molly? Its-.” She promptly cut me off.

  “Who the hell is this? What kind of sick monster are you? Don’t you have any respect?!”

  “Wait! Its Silvana! Aunt Molly please!”

  “Silvana is dead, and you are seriously disturbed calling here will we are trying to grieve.”

  The wave of shock hit me with such a severe force that I hadn’t even realized she hung up until the dial tone grew progressively louder in my ear.

  They thought I was dead, but I wasn’t. Was I?

  I called back repeatedly until the power suddenly shut off early the following morning, never getting an answer.

  I became a squatter, a forgotten tenant, in the home I had always called my own. By the time I was down to only old ketchup packets as my main food source, and the house looked as if a twister had gone through it, nearly a year had passed. Time moved slowly, and I was aware of every minute of it as I tried to survive the life of a dead girl. On what would have been Silas’s nineteenth birthday, I lit an old blue birthday candle from our junk drawer and blew it out towards the woods. Wishing a silent wish for him. On my own nineteenth birthday, I hid under my mother’s bed, trying to block the world out as it had done to me. I avoided the woods, and stayed locked inside as much as humanly possible. I hid away in the dark walls and stirred in the sadness and confusion that had become all I now knew.

  I was angry with my mom, it was one of those undeniable facts. Her actions had caused Silas’s father to burn the woods and the reincarnation of his son to nothing more than ash. Thinking of her, thinking of me dead, however, rocked me to my very core. No matter my anger, she was still my mother, and I needed her, needed her to know that I was still here. I was still alive, if only slightly, but if my sincerely logical aunt hadn’t believed me, then I knew there was little hope for my mother, no matter how much I may have needed her. I wished for Silas’s mother, for her angry glare and her deep understanding of all that now consumed me, but she had vanished herself, just as everything else had. I wondered if she was with my mother, or far away somewhere, or, I wretched the thought, among the ashes of the trees.

  Finally, with no power, no food, and not a soul to see besides myself, something I was still avoiding by awkwardly ducking under mirrors as I passed them, fearful of how my burnt and bald spotted scalp must look now, I reluctantly retreated into the woods.

  It wasn’t that I no longer loved the woods, even in their scorched and empty state. Or that I no longer missed Silas, whose soul I was almost certain remained in the only living tree I would find at the creeks edge now. I was simply exhausted. My mind had been an endless series of questions that contained no real answers for so long now that I was beginning to shut down. I walked over the blackened ashy earth as if I were a zombie, and I was beginning to think as I neared the bottom that I really was.

  When people treat you as if you died, it is startling easy to begin to feel dead.

  The happy high I usually got from being in the woods had all but vanished as I approached the now sparkling yellow creek. I stopped at its edge, thinking of honey, of what drowning in honey would feel like. Would it be like quicksand? Would it burn as it devoured me?

  I jumped in recklessly, unthinking of the consequences.

  Fortunately, it did not pull me in as I had thought it might, instead my ankles buckled in excruciating pain as I impacted with the shiny yellow substance, that I now understood was hard as diamond. I bent down, knocking my fist into its surface, it was smooth to the touch, and radiated with heat. It felt as if it were moving, reminding me of a frozen lake, whose raging water still gushed
violently beneath the ice.

  Just as I was thinking of how you should never jump on an unchecked frozen lake, a spiderweb of cracks began to spread from under my feet out towards the edges of the creeks dry walls.

  I’m not sure what compelled me to stay still, whether it was shock, a death wish, or simply just curiosity, but I did not move an inch as the yellow surface sprang to life beneath me. I expected it to break into large chunks, like a frozen lake does when its surface is broken, but instead, it simply cracked, finer and less seeable lines forming as it spread. The larger cracks began to separate, just enough to let a gloriously gold honey like substance ooze out. I could feel the heat rising as the golden substance began to overtake the shiny surface below me.

  It was as if I was standing on the sun, my presence causing it to break into what I hoped would become a million shooting stars.

  As the golden honey substance began to burn my still healing and very raw flesh, I remained still and unmoving, allowing the pain to wash over me, to allow me a second of not having to think. It was a subtle pain, a manageable one, like holding a cup of tea that was just a little too hot.

  The pain that began burning in my core as the golden substance encased my feet was unbearable however. I had not yet been able to see the blue light glowing from within me outside of the darkness of the shower, which made it slightly easier to not dwell on, especially in light of everything else. Now the light shown bright through the thin white cotton fabric of my tank top, as if it were trying to push straight out of my stomach, propelling me forward as I tried uselessly to fight against its pull. The forceful pull from within my very core pushed me forward, out of the yellow substance that was now beginning to roll down to creek with the old flow that mimicked the water it had replaced. The force brought me to the base of the solitary oak tree, forcing me into it, suffocating me in the rough bark.