29. Lemon Cake #2
My cheeks flushed, and she giggled again in response, exiting the garden. “Darling girl, I’m going to go put my feet up and nap until twilight. You have fun out here. I’ll see you in the square tonight.”
The monsters were nocturnal, but I felt their eyes on me, from their caves, as I pulled weeds.
The women slept during the day, but I felt their curiosity and whispers as I tilled fresh soil.
At least I had plants between my hands. Dirt under my nails, the earthy smell of greenery calmed my tense limbs and reminded me of home.
Keeping my mother’s garden growing was one thing.
This overgrown mess was another. I guessed that none of the women whisked away by withers had any farming skills.
The zucchini bumped up next to the tomatoes, overcrowding and strangling the vines.
Pumpkin starts had no room to propagate, too close to the fence line, and someone had haphazardly attempted growing carrots in a patch of clay where they stood no chance of sprouting roots.
It would be a big job to move plants and oversee the propagation of others.
After spending near hours raking out a new plot and marking the redesign of the garden, I wiped my brow of sweat and leaned on the fencepost, staring out over the field and assessing the tree line.
Fable had mentioned a grove of fruit trees and berry bushes.
My curiosity pulled me from the fencepost and trudged me through the high grass of the field.
Orange and purple muddled in the sky and crickets chirped.
It was somehow warmer here than in Willowspire.
The sky was brighter, the plants vibrant, and insects and small animals scurried about.
A dark cloud of fear loomed over my forgotten town…
yet this place ruled by monsters operated like a safe haven.
I couldn’t make sense of it, and my mind would scarcely allow me to try.
Instead, my thoughts told me to focus on the plants, the trees, the earth, and survey what fruit trees existed here and what variety of berries.
Having a job always helped quiet my brain in times of stress.
Rumor thought I crocheted because I loved blankets and scarves.
I crocheted because it steadied my trembling hands and silenced my worried mind.
When darkness fell in Willowspire, all I could imagine some nights was the distinct possibility of waking up to screams from the rapture and Rumor being taken—just like our mothers were.
When the daylight faded, and I couldn’t tend mother’s plants, my hands needed something else to do.
Suffice it to say, we had plenty of blankets and scarves.
Rumor would gift me new yarn on my birthday each year, not knowing she was only contributing to my anxiety activity, not my passion.
What a luxury it would be to discover a true desire.
Something I wanted just for me. Not for survival, not to please Rumor or keep us safe, something that I wanted just because I wanted it.
In that moment, that felt like traveling through this monster town to a line of fruit trees.
A job.
A desire.
An anxiety activity.
Anything to escape the feeling of eyes on my back and the dark and looming questions that plagued me.
Fable was pregnant with a wither’s baby…
the women here were willingly intimate with their withers.
Would that be expected of me, too? Those were thoughts I couldn’t allow to linger.
Instead, I reached a line of fruit bearing trees and knelt to pick up a freckled green pear.
Giving it a soft squeeze, I found that it was perfectly ripe.
I inhaled the scent, hoping the innocent aroma of tartness could wash away the fear within me.
The first bite was delicious and juicy, dripping nectar down my chin.
As I ate my snack, I assessed dozens of blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry bushes alongside the eclectic grove.
This section of the town alone could feed me every day and I’d be content.
However, tasting my mother’s lemon cake was a bittersweet surprise.
It was as if a part of her was here, waiting for me, telling me everything would be okay.
Would it all be okay?
How could that be possible?
Wading through low hanging branches, heavy with lemons, I made my way to an overfull blueberry bush.
The vines were teeming with little cobalt spheres, and as I reached for them, a cloud passed overhead, darkening the sky and casting a long shadow over me.
The shadow only covered me and not the grove, and then I realized it wasn’t a cloud.
My breath froze in my chest as I slowly turned, finding Vore standing taller than the modest seven-foot trees.
Any human’s natural instinct would be to run, and that inclination sprung in me as well, beholding a creature so fearsome, so muscular and tailored for the kill.
His pale eyes took me in before he rubbed the back of his neck, in that all too human way of his that disarmed me instantly, blooming something strange and warm in my center as I admired his frame.
Fear shifting into… something else… something fear should probably never morph into… lust.
Vore’s head twitched and his jaw tightened. “The flavor of your emotions… they intoxicate me.”
Surprise fluttered through me. “You can taste my emotions?”
Vore nodded, staring at me with restrained darkness. He rested his hand on a branch of a lemon tree. “What do you think of our harvests?”
I swallowed, running my palm over a patch of pink raspberries. “So plentiful and sublime. Do the crows and snakes not come for them? I could hardly keep them at bay in Willowspire. The moment a berry was fresh, a murder of crows would appear.”
The corner of Vore’s mouth lifted slightly. “They had nothing to fear in Willowspire.”
Vore’s deep velvet voice mixed with something cocky then, a tone I’d never heard before. I was still getting used to the fact that he could communicate so… humanly.
“Why didn’t you speak on the journey here?” I asked, plucking a raspberry.
Vore’s gaze followed the berry from my fingertips to my lips, and that warm feeling in my belly returned. I tried to push it away because, apparently, he could taste my emotions. Did that mean he tasted my desire? My lust?
Taking a seat, the wither leaned against the lemon tree, resting his elbows on his knees and looking out over the town. “My words only exist here. Outside this place, I cannot speak, not as you can.”
“But you understood everything I said to you?”
“Yes.”
“Vore.” I stepped forward, feeling the heat from his body. “Why did you take me? Why’d you take me on my wedding day?”
The wither pulled his gaze from the town and regarded me with an unreadable expression. “It is the way of things. Both in blood and in treaty.”
“That’s not a good enough answer. My home is gone, my sister, my friends?—“
“You were chosen,” he interrupted. “You are mine now, and I am yours.”
All the air in my body left my lungs in a short, horrified burst. “No.”
“You have no choice. Nor do I.”
Like a trapped fawn, my eyes scanned the land. “What if I run?”
“Then I will find you.”
“What if I scream?”
“No one will hear you, and no one would stand against me for you. No man nor beast is foolish enough to take a chosen from one of our kind,” Vore said plainly without hint of gloat or pride. It was true. I knew it was. I was trapped.
Grief burrowed in my chest as I remembered my sister. Was she in bed with her ailment or was she hacking her way through the forest with Birch searching for me? What horrible fate awaited her if she didn’t rest in her quest? Death, only death.
“What does that feeling taste like?” I asked with resignation.
Vore plucked a lemon with two fingers and handed it to me. “Your sadness is sour.”
I took the yellow citrus in my palm. “My sister will come looking for me… so will the man you took me from.”
“They will not find you here.”
“But she might die trying,” I said, feeling fresh tears pool in my eyes. “Rumor is all I have, she’s the only family I have. If you won’t let me go, if I’m to be trapped with you forever, would you not at least let me go back to Willowspire to tell her goodbye?”
“No,” Vore said with finality. “I cannot protect you past the mother willow tree, and I cannot allow you in any space where I cannot defend you and ensure your safety.”
“Please,” I begged, feeling a tear fall.
Vore let out a breath like a gust of wind. “No, I am sorry.”
Angrily, I wiped my face with my palm and stomped past him. “Then I’m going into my house, and I’m never coming out.”
I’d hoped he’d stay under his tree—but to my horror, the ground sounded at my rear as he stomped after me. “Then I will sit at your front door for eternity.”
Turning on my heel then, I gripped the lemon in my palm, and without thinking, flung it at the wither as hard as I could. The fruit hit his chest, bouncing off like a kid’s bouncy ball. Vore arched a brow and struggled not to smile.
“Why me?” I yelled through fury and frustration. “Why take me? I’m nothing and no one special. My life would have been perfectly plain without you—just like me. Let me go! Find a wondrous, adventurous, monster-loving girl to shower with all this—this—goodness. I don’t want it.”
Vore stepped forward, reaching his hand out, his thumb and forefinger gently holding my jaw, making me feel indescribably tiny as I stared up at him. “You are not nothing. Do you not understand? This is all for you. I belong to you. You captured me , Prism.”