9.05
One trial done.
I still had others to face down.
It had felt like it had taken years, but no time had apparently passed here. I could barely remember where people had stood before I’d let Carl reach out for me…
If there’d been something solid to hit, I might have hit it.
Old wounds scraped raw. Shame, regret…
False wounds?
The thought was quiet, almost not in my own voice. It’s not real.
A weight lifted off my shoulders. It was much as it had been when I’d first arrived in the Drains. I turned my face skyward, drawing in a deep breath.
Difference was, back then, it had almost been because things had been so bad they couldn’t get much worse. Now…
This was a kind of relief. Things made sense, and knots were coming untangled. Some things still didn’t make sense, there was a kind of horror to this, but I wasn’t burdened by my past anymore.
Because I didn’t necessarily have one.
I exhaled that deep breath I’d taken, and I saw vapor. Moisture leaving my body? More moisture inside my body? Dust? Something else?
I tried again, exhaling on purpose, and I didn’t see anything.
Some branches were still growing, trying to find places on the exterior of my body to entrench themselves. There was a sound like splintering wood as they lurched and spasmodically grew to reach their new vantage points. I could feel them embracing me.
I unzipped my sweatshirt to peer at my bare chest. My chest was untouched, my ribs and back had the branches. My face- I couldn’t see any of my face except my left cheekbone, nose, and part of upper lip when I moved my face in certain ways. I didn’t see any marks.
No telling about the other side of my face. I had only one working eye, now that I was back.
A spatter of water ran over my face and head, and I wiped it away – smearing a bit of grit over my forehead. I wiped it off as best as I could, rubbing the grit onto my pants, and then ran damp hands through damp hair, pushing it back out of my eyes. Silty grime and moisture kept it in place.
There were more birds on me now. All tattoos, still, some hiding among the thicker branches, only the dark circles of their eyes peering out.
“I’m guessing you’re the spirits that possessed me as I cracked?” I asked. Filling in the gaps. I tried to get a better view of the birds, rolling up my sleeves and moving my arms-
A creaking, splintering sound as I moved my arm. No damage done, only the branches on the skin moving. I tested my movement, but the sound was far quieter. Just a bit of stiffness, working out the kinks.
I resumed moving my arms to get a better view of the birds, and I could see how they were looking up at me. They weren’t moving, but when I looked away and looked back again, they’d taken entirely different positions. Still on the same branches, but turned in different directions, wings in different positions.
It would have been almost cartoonish, if they didn’t look so eerie. The color was almost entirely gone. Even the birds looked like ghosts. Echoes.
“You’ve got a nice window seat now, huh?” I asked.
No response, of course.
In the wake of coming out of the Shadow-place, I’d felt cold, and I’d felt like I was almost in shock.
Now, as the seconds passed, I didn’t feel my heartbeat.
I wasn’t breathing, and I hadn’t been since I’d intentionally exhaled, but I wasn’t purple in the face either. I reminded myself to keep up the act. Breathe in, breathe out, just like I’m supposed to.
I found the breathing became automatic.
There.
There would be rules to be followed, as an Other. As a vestige.
Sucks that I don’t know exactly what those rules are.
I turned, looking around. A small handful of people were staring at me.
I collected myself, getting my clothes in order, rolling down my sleeves. Hood up. I fixed the bandage around my ruined hand and the bandage around my gouged wrist.
I’d faced down the reality of my past.
My present? The future?
My present situation was marked by my visions of what was going on elsewhere. I was stuck here.
The future… I wasn’t even sure how to parse that.
Maybe I could connect the dots if I had another dream, but I didn’t feel like sleeping anytime soon. Not so recently after that experience. A part of me still felt like I could embrace it. I could just… give up and let it happen.
Accept somebody else’s idea of peace.
I felt a thrum of alarm and unease in my chest at the idea, as if my heart was a box and something was inside, fluttering in momentary panic. The vibration of it ran through me.
I turned. I had questions, and I had only one place to go to get them.
I drew a small handful of curious glances.
The door to the Witch’s hut was closed. I heard voices through the windows – there wasn’t any glass.
I walked a distance away, and I waited.
One of the birds tattooed on my hand was peering around my sleeve, looking in the direction of the witch’s hut. I pulled my sleeve down.
I mulled over the questions I had, and tried to figure out what I could offer as a gift.
The door opened. The hinges were makeshift, not actually hinges, and the door opened in an odd way. The man struggled with the door until the witch held it. He lurched out, a bundle swaddled in his arm.
In the swaddle was a very small, frail woman or maybe a child. The individual was riddled with the long, hard kind of mushroom that grew on the sides of trees, nearly to the point of being buried by them.
The man looked despondent as he hobbled away. I watched him go.
“You’re back,” the witch said, her eyes on me. “You look quite different, considering how short a time you were gone.”
“How long?”
“Oh, it’s hard to measure time here. Hours?”
I nodded.
“Come in?”
“The only gift I can offer is a bit of story, knowledge.”
“It’s only a convention,” she said. “Not an obligation.”
“I remember coming to a decision, maybe a year ago,” I said, “I wouldn’t accept something for free. I didn’t want to give someone else that power over me. To make me dependent. I just discovered that that decision was only an illusion. I’m honestly not sure if it holds any weight, but I feel like it can’t be a bad decision.”