Chapter 42
D ad doesn’t meet my eyes as I’m dragged before a large crowd towards a set of spiralling stairs he stands atop. Ribbons tie my hands together behind my back. Dead acorns adorn my neck, bound with string. My mouth is clamped shut beneath metal and still, I can not feel the trees.
I was hoping I would get to say goodbye to them, get to feel the wind on my cheeks one last time, get to hear how the greenery always answers Dae’s call. How shrubs bristle when he’s near. How birds chirp when he’s around, as though they’re giggling, as though he’s let them into a secret joke, one no human could ever understand.
Instead, I’m faced with this—this empty, desolate place. I’m dragged higher up the dark stairs. My bound hands scrape against intricate carvings that writhe in the flickering torchlight. Fanged winged angels coil around screaming faces, with scales meticulously etched into the cold stone. Scenes of sacrifice play out in miniature—tiny figures splayed on altars, their hearts offered to clawed gods. Each carving pulses with a dark energy, whispering forgotten horrors as I’m pulled relentlessly higher, closer to him. To that rat.
I crane my neck upwards, the coarse twine biting into my skin, and see a dizzying expanse of sky. It’s a brutal, indifferent blue. The sun glares down, turning the morose faces of the crowd into a sea of grotesque masks, their features blurred by distance and the shimmering heat haze.
The acorns, heavy and cold against my skin, swing with every forced drag—a pendulum, counting down the moments I have left.
I can’t scream, can’t plead, but I can glare. I suppose for now, that will have to be enough. I can’t believe how stupid I was when Dae first stole me away. I almost gag when I think back to how willing I was to die for this… this crowd of cockroaches.
Our climb ends and the rough-hewn platform beneath my bare feet vibrates—finally, I can feel life. But now it’s overwhelming. I realise father wasn’t avoiding my glare from guilt, but because he’s focusing on the source of… everything.
Everything is what stands before his feet. The dais I’m thrown on splits, not with a jagged crack, but a clean, precise line that bisects the platform. The edges of the divide glow with an inner light, a luminescence that pulses in time with the vibrations under my feet. It’s as though the very fabric of reality has been carefully peeled back, revealing the source from which every tree spurts, every caterpillar grows, every flower blooms.
For a moment, I forget. I forget the betrayal and I forget where I am and I forget what is about to happen. I forget that I will not get to say goodbye to my great love, my great betrayer. I forget that my father is a rat. I forget my mother and I forget myself as I stand before true life.
I’m shoved forward on my knees until I’m right before my father. He awkwardly turns me around, so that my back is to him, but my front faces the split.
With a jewelled knife clutched between his fingers, he makes a speech. I’m between him and the split in the world, staring down into the source of life.
She calls to me. Beckons me. Drowns out Father’s speech until all I can hear is her drum beat. “Come, Elysia,” she says in the voice of a thousand trees. “Come.”
Dad mutters an apology as I feel the tip of his knife meet my skin. It pulls back, as though he’s preparing the spot that he will stab me in.
“Come,” she says again.
Perhaps, if I dive into her warm embrace, I will still die. Perhaps, father will still win, the sacrifice will still be complete. But at least I’ll die on my terms.
Dae was right. Fuck these lot.
I drop the upper portion of my body to the floor, wiggle my knees, and then unceremoniously throw myself into the abyss.