The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  I opened my eyes and smiled at him- a watery smile that I hoped was dull enough to let my hate shine through- hate that wan’t diluted by even one drop of love, not anymore. I was burning and my soul and heart had been incinerated for it, leaving me with nothing to love a Barachiel with. Nothing to fight for Lindy and Coaxley with. Nothing to accomplish, but causing them pain before I surrendered to my own.

  I craned my neck to look at my shoulder and laughed when I saw the veins around my brand that had seemed prominent and swollen a few moments before had continued to swell- travelling all the way down my arm to the back of my left hand, which was balled into a fist to counteract the agony. My skin was tight and white around them in some places and flushed red in others, and in the two seconds that I watched, I felt the veins on my right arm began to thicken as my blood boiled there as well. It didn’t look right- it looked evil, and was clearly symptomatic of the kind of illness that couldn’t be cured which was exactly what I wanted. Satan had said I’d needed her to escape here alive and maybe she was right, but death was still an escape and I yearned for its swift arrival, even if that came hand in hand with sheer agony.

  The twins hadn’t seen this coming because they’d been looking at things about me that mattered more to them than a useless shoulder, but I had, and I was so relieved to know that my beauty was being morphed into something monstrous due to their negligence that I could have laughed in triumph. I wanted those poisoned veins to swell under my face, to burst and soak my hair when they erupted and that was what this was all leading up to, I knew it; an eruption, and after too many years of fighting for them I finally gave up- released my fists and let the rage and despair course through me; I let myself be ugly.

  This wasn’t my fault. I did not deserve this. Time would not absolve them of what they’d done to me or heal the pain, and I would not remain in Eden for the rest of my life- because I was leaving now. Kohl, Cherry and Dulcie had accused me of being brainwashed into believing that I was happy here and I’d disagreed- how could it be brainwashing if I’d longed for the lie myself? If I’d been a willing participant in the sham? But I knew now that brainwashing wasn’t a recent affliction but an ancient one: I’d been conditioned to believe that this was where I belonged and that Kohén was who I belonged with since I was five, and being aware of the fact that that was being done intentionally to me had convinced me that I was above falling for it, and that I was staying here because it would eventually pay off for me if I played my cards right.

  But I’d fallen, and I’d fallen hard, and the twins had fallen with me. I’d not thought clearly since the day that Karol and I had first ended up in that pool together- since I’d looked in the mirror and had seen a swan instead of a duckling. I’d stopped fighting against the system then and had started fighting with it, trying to find a way to make my world co-exist with theirs, but that simply wasn’t possible. Equality on earth would never be possible so long as the person in charge believed that they were entitled to more than another.

  I wasn’t a third-born, I was a person! I wasn’t a caste- I was so much more than that or at least, I had been once. They’d treated me like a toy and had shattered me like one and I would not leave this earth until they understood that a butterfly or a firefly or even a diamond could be closed in a fist and expected to remain beautiful after.

  ‘Look me in the eye, both of you…’ I slid that smile back to Kohl, ‘and tell me how to men that are madly in love with a woman…’ the fog closed in, but it was thick enough to choke me like smoke now and I welcomed it, ‘can forget that’s she’s allergic to gold before they burn it into her bloodstream?’ I saw their expression shift from confused, to horrified to understanding before I let my eyes close and actually felt my blood bubble like sulphur as a sudden buzzing in my head became a scream.

  ‘Oh no! Oh no, oh NO! She didn’t-’

  ‘We forgot!’

  ‘The gold! There’s real gold in that powder, Kohl! You poisoned her!’

  ‘You were going to let mother poison her! You spend every second of every day with her! If you didn’t think of what the branding would mean for her, why should I have?’

  ‘I never thought of it as being real gold but- she needs Karol, now!’ Kohén sounded hysterical. ‘Her arm! Look at her arm!’

  ‘She’s known about that allergy for weeks now! Why didn’t she mention it earlier? That would have saved her from this all together!’

  ‘Because she didn’t want to be saved, oh Larkin…!’ hands scooped under me. ‘No baby, no! This isn’t how we’re supposed to end! We weren’t supposed to end, ever!’ He shook me. ‘I was lying, Larkin! I wasn’t going to let him share you, are you kidding?’ he shook me again. ‘I was just playing along to buy time!’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘I was waiting for you to undress or take her down the hall to tie her up- to release her for just one second- so I could kill you where you stood, you psychotic son of a bitch!’ My hair was smoothed away from my face. ‘I didn’t hide mother’s body Larkin I lay it in the hall by the door so it would be the FIRST thing that father and Karol would see when they came in! I would have opened the door too, but he started screaming-’

  ‘You were double-crossing me?’

  ‘Of course I was, you sick mother fucker! I’d never share her! You’re lucky you survived touching her skin for this long!’

  ‘But you touched her with me! You groped her-’

  ‘I tested her, dammit! You both claimed to have loved one another once, and I was temporarily thrown by it! So I inspected her, okay? I let her go to you for one moment so I could see if she reacted to you as she does to me but she did not and I knew I’d been a monster to let the charade go that far!’ Kohén sobbed, shaking me more violently. ‘Baby please, I just wanted you to have what you wanted! I wanted to see if the dream might be yours- the orphans, the books, the house by the ocean… the two of us, united! I didn’t want to do it and I should have known better but I was so jealous and scared and-’ his voice cracked. ‘I lost my faith in us. You made me lose faith in us, Kohl, and now she’s dying!’

  ‘I ought to kill you where you stand!’ Kohl bellowed.

  ‘DO IT!’ Kohén raged, and I felt him crackle around me. ‘I don’t want to live if she does not!’

  I heard what Kohén was saying- heard the words that ought to have flooded me relief, but my blood was lava and burned off any emotion that they might have evoked before they could resonate with me. His admission changed nothing- I was still dying because he’d broken his word to protect me from that brand and he would not get my forgiveness to ease his conscience with.

  I’d known that the golden brand would give me an allergic reaction, had known and had kept that fact to myself knowing that I wouldn’t be led out into that ballroom while covered in a violent red rash- but I had not known that it would burn me from the inside out like this. I was grateful that it was though, saving me the trouble of doing myself in, while bubbling away at my humanity like acid. I’d wanted to love God in the end but I did not and could feel no guilt for it now. I hadn’t wanted to go to Hell, but I was getting there due to the decisions that others had made- not by making decision of my own violation- and I was at peace with that too because my indifference towards my soul had freed me from the mortal, emotional trappings that had been caging me in for life!

  Besides, I’d managed to find a way out of there without taking Satan’s hand. I wasn’t much, but I was stubborn, and a smile twitched my lips when I realised that I would have had it all if I’d set my mind to it; the cotton fields, the library, the adopted children… the Rhett Butler of my dreams. I would have made it all happen, had I been given the freedom to do so.

  ‘I-OW!’ I felt Kohén seize up and stumble. ‘What was-ow!’ a slapping sound, we spun around.

  ‘What are- hey! Ow!’ another cry. ‘Kohén, did you zap me?’

  ‘No! Something’s stinging at me too… I… oh my GOD! Wasp!’ Kohén stumbled again and I felt my s
houlder flare with more bright pain as he hit the ground and let me roll out of his arms. ‘WASPS!’

  Kohl let out what could only be a shriek of fear and that’s when I heard a piece of that buzzing in my head break away and zip past my ear. My eyes flew open when I realised that there were truly wasps in the room, and focused on one as it blurred past. I shouldn’t have been able to see it given how out of my head I was, and for how the room was flashing as Kohén sent balls of energy hurtling at his tiny assailants, making the fog flash and crackle, but the wasp was glowing faintly the way a generic one oughtn’t and I smiled as I realised that these weren’t regular wasps, but manifested ones. And they were filling the air! My back was to the fireplace and I pushed up weakly and looked to my left, whispering her name when I saw her and smiling tearfully:

  ‘Constance…’

  My mother looked at me and smiled through bloody, cracked teeth and I knew in that moment that she was my mother and not theirs. She’d crawled out of the corridor an had come to help me, even though it was clear that she was beyond the point of being helped herself.

  ‘Too little, too late again, I know Lark…’ she lurched forward and collapsed, landing on her hands and knees and crying out in pain when her shattered right arm went out from under her, but before I could drag myself towards her, she curled back her left hand like she was throwing a ball and then let another handful of winged, hissing creatures fly across the room and to her boys. ‘But what the Hell!’

  And that was when the entire world began to buzz with her bright, light Nephilim energy.

  27.

  The boys must have known that there was no escaping a cloud of wasps but they were almost as stubborn as I was and so they fought hard. Kohén was dancing around, alternating between crying out my name (he’d lost sight of me in the thickening air) and sending out bolt after bolt of energy until he apparently had the sense to throw a shield of energy out and away from him, causing any of the winged creatures that came near to him to fry when they hit it and full to the ground while he bent low and tried to cross the room, angling towards the open spa door.

  Kohl had hit the deck and was attempting to use the mist like a shield and unfortunately the low position he assumed almost immediately allowed him to spot his mother across the room beneath the blanket of mist that was about knee-high and thickening due to all of the activity in the room. He let out a shout of discovery when he spotted her and then the cloud of stinging insects that she sent wafting his way, and immediately pushed up off the ground and began to stagger backwards from it, running into the side of the spring after having travelled only a metre or so. He grunted and almost lost his balance and the swarm closed in on him, but at the last minute he twisted around and half-dove into the water awkwardly, generating a huge splash that slopped over the sides.

  ‘Go Larkin, now!’ the duchess croaked at me but I could barely lift my head up let alone contemplate running. Besides, there was no point.

  I looked at her and shook my head. ‘I’m done for…’ I gasped. ‘My nickel allergy… the brand… it’s poisoning me.’

  ‘No,’ she gasped, and began to slither towards. ‘No, that can’t be true!’

  ‘I can’t move…’ I confessed, and then moaned when another rush of heat overcame me, tearing at my skirts, trying to get the too-warm fabric off my legs before I burst. ‘I’m burning up! Go let Karol and Elijah in if you can… let them see…’ I bowed forward again, saw my bared breasts and grimaced, using the energy I had to try and stuff myself back inside it before she got to close to me. ‘Let them all see…’

  ‘Demon!’ Kohl leapt out of the water and arced his hand through it while thrusting the other in his mother’s direction. His face was already swelling up in several places from where he’d been bitten, and his burn wound from earlier was leaking watery blood down his near-transparent toga. ‘Bitch!’ His water spray dissolved a lot of the mist, but he dropped that hand and swiped the other now, craning his head to look for his brother. ‘It’s mother causing the wasps!’ he roared. ‘Kill her Kohén, and make it count this time!’

  ‘No Kohén, don’t!’ I mewled, but I couldn’t be sure if he’d heard me. He was almost at the other side of the room then but he stopped abruptly ducked and turned, searching through the mist.

  ‘Larkin!’ he began to barrel forward, sliding the last few metres so that he could take my hand. ‘Larkin come on, we have to get out-’

  ‘Get away from me!’ I screamed and that was when I heard Kohl yell out something indecipherable. I looked up when the roar expelling from his lungs became thunderous and shrieked when I saw that he was somehow manipulating the water in the spring to his will. As he lifted his hands in a beckoning motion, the water was rising to the height of his chest and leaning back like a curling wave, forming a transparent wall between him and the rest of us. He looked first from his mother then to me as though deciding where to send the hilt of it first, but his eyes snagged on Kohén’s as it extended to mine and with a victorious shout he motioned his hands forward, directing the wave our way.

  Unaware that any of this was going on, Kohén had managed to grasp my wrist and was attempting to drag me to my feet while I pulled back and away from him, and when I saw that his charge had tripled in ferocity, I understood that if I didn’t break his hold I would die as a result of their combined powers and not their foolishness and that was horrifying to me after having lost so much!

  ‘No!’ I hissed, curling away from him and causing him to overbalance my way, and he would have hit the ground on my lap if Constance hadn’t taken that moment to make him a priority for the first time in her life. Or rather, the first time since she’d lied about which twin had come first.

  ‘Kohén drop your charge NOW!’ she bellowed in a voice more authoritative than any I’d ever heard her use before and it had its desired effect on her only obedient son. Kohén’s eyes bugged and he jerked his head her way, seeing her at last, but she was looking behind him and at Kohl and that forced Kohén’s gaze to follow. He saw the wave the moment it smashed against the ground three metres from him, looked down at himself, over at me and with a grunt of exertion, twisted sideways and dove across the room. He moved far too fast for any human to be expected to move and survive, coming down at the marble floor at a horrible angle while still sparking madly, but at the last moment he curled his body into a ball and rolled swiftly, landing on his feet and taking just the smallest fraction of time to bounce before he dove into the open door of the spa. I couldn’t care less whether he lived or died now that he was away from me, but part of me was still rather entertained by his athletic antics.

  The wave hit me then, but it was too shallow to do anything but push me back closer to the fireplace that was set between the two spa doors, and practically harmless without the threat of Kohén’s electricity near to me, but it was warm water and repugnant to me for it. I howled as my fever spiked higher and the weight of my skirts grew heavier and more oppressive, but I heard a smash a beat later, and looked up to see Kohén fling himself onto the metal bed frame that I’d dragged across to hold open the spa’s door. The water swooped across the floor beneath him a second later but he got his foot up onto the mattress on time, so it flowed harmlessly past him and down the other side of the corridor, dwindling to a trickle before it reached the first door on that side.

  ‘Get her!’ Kohl yelled then, and Constance and I looked at each other, wondering which her he was referring to. ‘Kohén-’

  ‘Fuck you! You tried to kill me!’ a bolt of lightning ripped the room in two, headed straight for Kohl, but Kohl had started retreating and jumped backwards out of the spring just as the electricity hit it with a mighty crack. Water hissed and bubbled but Kohl was already racing around the side of the spring towards Constance and the way out, drawing up another armful of water as he went.

  ‘You were going to try to kill me first!’ Kohl wheezed. ‘Now you cry foul? Eat shit!’ He didn’t have the time to manifest a wave as wide as
the last this time, but he backhanded it and sent a solid stream shooting Kohén’s way as Kohén sent out a second bolt. The two forces hit one another with an explosive hiss, but the only damage done was to the fog, which dissolved like someone had taken a bite out of the air. Spent, the boys both swooned back as their powers did, gasping in lungful’s of air.

  They’re weakening! But not fast enough! All it will take is one look at Constance or I to revive either! I must act now!

  I whimpered, trying to sit up and grasp at the fireplace, determined to get to and shield Constance’s body with my own even if it was the last thing I did, but I saw Kohl stumble again just as a gentle zing erupted from Kohén’s direction. I looked from one faltering twin to the other and was able to make out what looked like dozens of tiny welts on their bared skin as each half-collapsed again, clearly trying to get up to fight but most certainly failing.

  The wasps! I realised, looking around the room. There were barely enough left after the electricity versus water showdown (I’d seen how quickly Constance’s manifestations could be dissolved in Pacifica when it had rained on her) but they’d already done a lot of damage to handicap the twins who were now falling prey to their own allergies, and I knew that if Karol didn’t find a way in here soon (was that banging on the door I could detect over the blood rushing in my head?) they would be done for. In fact, there was a good chance that they were done for anyway. Hadn’t the last attack stopped Kohén’s heart?

  Where is Elijah? Why are he and Karol taking so long? Surely they would have been able to break down the door by now!

  ‘Run, Lark…’ Constance wheezed, crawling my way on her elbows again. ‘Mine won’t be as potent as the real thing, and I don’t even know how allergic they still are now that they are grown… this might be the only chance you’ll get so run now! the people on the other side of the fence will shield you!’