The Knot

Sloane tried to stay awake. But the world, the sunlight warm through the leaves, the tree trunk secure behind her and that familiar, beautiful, bustling wind, whispering of oceans and of woods all at once in her ears, these were against her. Sloane could still hear the page, crumpling in her fist. But before her gaze lay a yesterday she could not forget.

The dream didn’t lie. She half-wished it would. In it, she felt small, the smallness of a plump, clumsy nine-year-old. Her head felt cold from the new haircut, mandatory for prisoners, and from the height of the gallows

Sloane itched everywhere: coarse rope bit into her fleshy neck and wrists, both tied, preventing her from scratching. Instead, she could only lick her lips, missing the taste of cream. This was all her mother had fed her, cream and jam and bread, foods she'd claimed were only proper for the daughters of a lady. That had come before. Sloane remembered her sister, Iola, and the letter she’d begun, still clutched in her older self’s hand. Her free hands. But the dream did not let her return to them.

The rope bit deeper into her flesh as she tried peering down. She’d seen the top from the bottom, when others had stood where she stood now. Neck and hands bound, trembling above a sea of strewn bodies. The price, Sloane had learned quickly. This is the price of magic. Not that she knew any. If she’d known magic, she never would’ve been sold. She and Iola wouldn't have run away.

From the top, everything looked different. Sloane’s eyes watered and her stomach flip-flopped. Dizzy, she averted her gaze to the tree tops. They towered against the sky like emerald clouds against silver-gray. Winter was coming early; the little man had announced it while they’d been lugged through the forest to this clearing. He and his friend, the giant, were the last to be hanged.

Before me. Sloane swallowed. She resisted the urge to look down, where the friends laid together on the spoiled earth. Where are birds? she’d wondered. She had only read about them before being shipped here. Her mother had always kept her daughters inside, away from skies, from silver light that equalled rain. The cold wind whistled above the gallows and turned her skin damp, as if to prove the little man’s words true.

As heavy footsteps behind her signalled her end, Sloane did not yet know she would later write to Iola of birds. Right then, she only knew she must not die. Her hands were chubby, but small, and the soldiers had gotten lazy - hours of hangings had done little for their patience. Though they ran red with blood, her wrists were soon freed, but the noose was trickier.

Worse, the soldiers had finally gotten a fire going. The smell of dead flesh rose through the clearing, forcing her to gag, but even deadlier was the smoke, which stung her eyes and lungs and brought on fits of coughing. Still, the footsteps drew closer, one for every five beats of her heart. Sweat stained her closely shorn head and instantly left her skin chilled by the wind, but Sloane ignored both. She tugged at the knot behind her neck, tugged with every cough and tear that dripped down her face as smoke smothered the air. She managed to loosen it, so that, when she looked down, it didn’t hurt. And just as she did, she caught sight of the most terrible, dark eyes she had ever seen.

The moment they met hers, the world tilted, becoming all sky as Sloane found herself thrust into nothing.

Thunder crackled, rousing her awake. The page almost slipped from her fingers as she landed inside her older, somewhat safer and questionably wiser body. She did not think of it as a woman’s body, or a lady’s, as her mother had so desired it be. Rather, it was simply the place where she collected scratches, scars and bruises and required covering against cold, infection and the prevention of being eaten, whether by wolves or mosquitoes. Her hands, the most useful part of it, gained the letter back just in time as the rest of her leaned forward.

The sun had melted into a soft, orange blur below the trees, leaving her skin chilled, but she barely felt it - there was something Sloane was supposed to remember. She turned to the letter for answers, holding it close to her face to better make out her rushed words. It began with its usual bold title, her sister’s name, followed by:

‘…Please don’t be angry…met with the trolls again…no trouble, not really…only a very small incident with stolen ale...mermaids are keeping their secrets, nothing new…the villagers still think I’m a witch…have yet to hear from the elfin library, though they did teach me to seal with wax…’

Sloane paused, grinning. The elves had let her volunteer as their “official shelf stacker” (thanks to her height) in their strange, ethereal underground library. When the work ended, she was presented with a long, red-brown stick of wax and a seal of their making. It was set with a looped initial in their language, a letter she’d learned years before was an S, though it looked a lot more like an L. They’d been the ones who had taught her to write letters, Sloane recalled fondly. So long ago.

‘Not that it’s helping now.’ She sighed and leaned back. Thunder pealed again, but not above her. Through the trees below, Sloane caught flashes of torches on silver. Weapons! Sloane stuffed the letter into her coat; both her coat and boots were God sent gifts she’d gained from an abandoned soldier’s body. With the war, endless and incomplete, the spoils rained aplenty, though there were also the drawbacks.

For one, the bodies, which fed the trees, but repelled welcome visitors. Sloane hadn’t seen the gypsies in years and the last of the trolls had left days ago, not to return till who knew when? The war on magic had finally reached its end two Summers ago, but who knew for how long, or the new reason for the continued fighting?

For another, the fires. Only last Spring, after Sloane had gotten herself hired as a maid in one of the nearby manors, war-fire broke out in the woods. As Sloane had started making her first floor of beds, the trees called her to their aid. She’d spent the next few weeks soaking blankets, forgetfully carted off in her hurry, in the river that threaded itself through the trees, and putting out wild flames. 

Fire! The trees heard the word once, in her head, and passed it round. Within seconds, a flurry of panicked oaks shivered around her, nearly knocking her right off the branch. Fire! they whispered anxiously. Where’s fire? Who’s fire?

‘It’s fine,’ Sloane tried to soothe them. She should’ve remembered their one ‘bad’ word. Nothing else scared them, not even the sound of axes or the lionous roars of thunder Winter always promised.

This noise wasn’t thunder, though it shook the earth and disturbed the air. She knew it well. This was a sound she had come to despise throughout her indefinite stay in the woods: this was the mad flight of battle horses.

Already, she imagined the leather binding their mouths and bodies, the sweat and foam dripping from their flanks and mouths, the whips, the crazed eyes as they tried to make sense of the trees and earthen smells as they were spurred on by heartless riders.

But there was still something, at the edge of memory…Lost in thought, Sloane slid from the branch and found herself in a lying position. Just below, she faced a long drop off a cliff into a meadow. Instead of falling, however, she was lowered gently by a hand made of tree limbs. The dark blue stone of the cliff swept against her cheek as touched down.

Thank you, she thought and bowed to the tree. The tree bowed in return, then fell back into position as though it had never moved. Stop the fire, it whispered, setting off another set of anxious gossip as Sloane hurried away through falling darkness. I really ought to remember that drop next time, she warned herself, then raced after the unwanted company.

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[fwvalidus]

You are very good with your words in describing things like the sun setting orange. I fear you move to quickly from part to part however. I was not sure what ended up happening at the gallows, but maybe you meant to have mystery in that!