8 – 4

That feeling of crushing strength, the one that robbed my body of will to stand and air to breath, should return in the face of what lay before me: a fallen tree, once a missile in the dark, now broken and clawed into a work of art. Its eyes are dark holes punched deep into the wood by long talons with a vicious curve. Its mouth is an uneven crater, splintered edges in the image of broken teeth. Framing this long, narrow face are branches, laid to resemble the curl of a ram's horns. A haunting and horrible portrait, made and left where it was sure to be found.

Milo called it panic. It's not, but I don't know what other name to give it. Whatever its true name, I do not feel it as I stare and stare while Milo stands beside me. I don't feel anything, not anger nor fear nor bitter resignation. I am feel distant and hollow, and there is silence. Am I still dreaming? Have I fallen back into slumber after falling off a sofa?

No. No, I can't be. There's not blurring to the edges of the world, nor any softness to its making. There's no strangeness to what I see and feel. The earth is solid and cool, the sun is bright and warm, and the sky is clear and vast. The silence is only in me. Bird and beast go about their treetop lives, the wind drifts a breeze through leaf and grass, and distant voices sound in conversation. My eyes burn, and it's only a hand on my arm that can pull them away from a monster's art.

Milo, with his dark eyes and his understanding, looks back. He says not a word, and for that I am grateful. I have only just shed the monumental weight of panic, and I don't have the fortitude to carry any more wisdom he has to offer. I step away from him and his touch and turn my regard back to the message left for me on the path of hard-packed dirt.

I feel, then. Oh, how I feel, then. Cold root-and-vine wraps around my heart and creeps into my mind. I name it dread, I call it terror, and I know that this is exactly what I'm meant to do. It wants to take its time. I imagine it curled in the darkest recesses of some fetid cave or forest hollow, smug and satisfied, dreaming of sickening new torments to come. What will it conjure, I wonder, in the cruel abscess of its mind? What blood-soaked game awaits, when the time comes for its return? Vines cling. Roots dig.

They catch fire, becoming anger. It races up from the depths of my heart along twist and tangle until there is no room left in me for anything but the burn. My dread and my terror are fuel that drive the flame to greater, brighter heights. Wood scrapes on my bare heel as I drive it into the totem's face. Impact rattles up my leg. My jaw flexes; teeth grinding, hands clenching. I do it again, a hiss of effort pushing past the sealed line of my mouth. The trunk's refusal to move, to do nothing but rock side-to-side, spurs me further. I take up the thinner branches of the totem's horns in my hands and break them, some over my knee. This isn't anger, nor is it frustration. Both I have felt before now, and neither are this.

I hurl the splintered horns off the path with a growl in my throat. Milo watches with his hands in his pockets and nothing wise to say. Good. Where before I couldn't bear to carry it, now I simply have no wish to hear it. I am alight, I am burning, and it feels magnificent. I hurl the last branch I can carry into the trees. It strikes a trunk and falls to the ground with a clatter. There is no describing the raw-scraped sound that escapes me as anything other than hatred. I hate, like I never have before. I'm to cower, am I? I'll hide, shall I?! Reduced to a plaything, to wait until it is convenient for that fucking monster to come and kill me?!

I will not. Refusal comes on heaving breath, on singing blood, and the roar of fire in my heart. I will not. Without horns, the totem is just a log, fit for nothing but the axe. Hatred's fire burned away my dread, my terror. It would be fitting for actual flame to char this taunt into ash. I whirl around to the sound of footsteps in the grass. Milo stops at an arm's distance. “Do you have an axe?” I ask him. My voice is hoarse, and low.

“I...do,” he says, cautious and a little confused.

“I would borrow it,” I say, “if you would allow me.”

He seems to roll several questions around his mind before settling on a simple, “Why?”

I rest my foot on the log, blinding its deep-punched eyes beneath me. “This is too heavy to move in one piece,” I answer.

It takes him this long to go from where he was to a place of understanding. He looks from me and the trembling curl of my fists, to the log, and back. He sees my hatred, my refusal, and perhaps what I mean to do. It's not amusement in his smile, but an echo of his own defiance. “Addy'd skin me if we ran out of firewood,” is his answer. “and, since you're offering...” He gestures me along with a swing of his head.

I walk beside him, back the way we came. The totem was left for me to find as a taunt, a reminder, and a message. I have one of my own in mind, bright and burning against the cold dark of night. You will see it. From wherever you lurk, monster, you will see what I'll make of you.

- - -

I was only able to manage a couple of swings before painful reality broke through hatred's numbing haze. It reminded me that, despite my newfound drive, I am still very much wounded and worn. Hardly an ideal condition for woodcutting. I sit nearby, grass tickling my hands and feet, while Milo does it instead. How he groused and grumbled when I gave him back the axe! His complaints of false promises and such did well to help the bitter helplessness of my body not giving what I wanted from it.

It's not long before the others find us, drawn by the dry crack of axe meeting wood. Lavinia leads the way, braid of earth-black hair swinging behind her and gleaming in the sun's light. She looks at the scene before her with a puzzled wrinkle to her nose and a question in her eyes. A question that she will not, under any circumstances, keep to herself. “What are you doing?” she asks, and before her father can open his mouth to answer, she rushes to add, “And don't say chopping wood!”

Behind her trails Adelaide, her daughter writ large. She's pulled her hair into a high tail and rolled her sleeves to the elbow. Dirt lines the beds of her nails and dusts her hands, and a trowel's handle pokes from the front pocket of her apron. When Milo stops chopping to complain, “That's what I'm doing!” she gives a smile and fond roll of her eyes.

Lavinia throws her hands and eyes to the sky in a prayer for patience, missing how Milo grins. When she gets no answer from the pitiless sun above, she makes a sound of pure disgust and stomps to interrogate her father properly. Adelaide watches her family for a moment, then her bright green eyes come to rest on me. She comes my way, and I see that there's no one else behind her.

So where, then, is Clarke? Why isn't she here? Unbidden by me, a parade of all her visible injuries march across my mind. Had one of them gone unnoticed and become infected? If so, she could use her magic to cure it, but she had used so much of it last night. Maybe she hasn't a drop left in that piece of ice, or in her soul, or however it works. Maybe she's shivering beneath a blanket as her body burns itself up in a effort to rid itself of the poison in her blood. Adelaide sits beside me, adjusting her clothes so they so don't tug or twist.

“Where's Clarke?” I ask, and before she can answer, another question spills out on the heels of the first, “Is she alright?”

“She's fine,” Adelaide reassures me. “Needed to lie down for a bit. That's all.”

There's a touch of delicacy in her answer, which I would usually care to respect. This is Clarke, though, and so I don't. Even unshaken by the strength of panic, I wouldn't. “Why?!” I demand, and get an annoyed look for it.

“Her monthly came,” Adelaide says, “Early, according to her.”

I wince in sympathy. She is very much not alright, then. My own ended just before I set off down my road, and so isn't due for some time yet. To have to deal with it now, in addition to all else, is a cruelty I didn't think the accursed moon capable of. “Oh,” I say.

“Oh,” Adelaide echoes, nodding. It's all that needs saying. We watch as Lavinia demands a turn with the axe and, to my surprise, is given one. Carefully supervised by Milo, she drives the sharpened metal head into the trunk once and again before declaring the activity boring and giving it back. Adelaide gestures at the growing pile of firewood and asks, “What's this about?”

What should I say? That the monster who drove us to her door is still out there, waiting to resume its sickened game? She would throw us out, monthly or not. She'd be sane to do it. So I should lie, come up with something she'd believe or be unable to prove false.

Only, I can't. I just can't. Not after all she and Milo have done for us. “It was left for me to find,” I say, “a...message, I suppose. From it.” My voice cracks on it, from lingering fear and hatred. Her eyes darken and her brow draws. She understands my meaning.

“So this, then,” and again she gestures, “is...what? Another message?”

“Not yet,” I answer. “The – it threw that at us, when we were running. I can't throw it back, but I can do something else.” I look into Adelaide's eyes and hope her understanding continues. “I can burn it.”

“What if that brings it back?” she challenges. “What if it's over, and you and Clarke are free, and doing this just starts it all over again?” Her eyes flick to Milo and Lavinia, who are now bickering about something. “What if you bring it down on them?”

It's a whisper, this last question. Unbidden and unwelcome sights rise from my imagination. Milo's head torn from his body, like the horse, his dark and kind eyes vacant forever more. Lavinia, small and shattered in eight-fingered hands. Adelaide, using her last breath to spit a curse on what brought doom to her family.

On who.

On me.