Those Fatal Flowers

Chapter 7 Before

7

Before

Raidne and Pisinoe stand in stunned silence. They can’t accept the ship is real until another lightning flash confirms it, but I saw the lily, its ethereal glow—I need no more convincing. The third time light streaks across the darkness, instinct takes control. My wings twitch, my talons sink into the dirt floor, anticipating muscle between them. We strip ourselves bare. Anything extra will weigh us down, a dangerous proposition in the fury of the squall. Pisinoe has the hardest time of it, bedecked in all those jewels. She tears them from her body with a ferocity that appears only in these moments, when our humanity recedes and the raptor emerges.

Men to hear our song. To follow its promises into the waves.

Tonight, we survive.

Raidne is first out the door, then Pisinoe, then me. We run in a line toward the cliffs. When Raidne reaches the edge, she jumps from the precipice without hesitation. Pisinoe and I follow with equal confidence. With our black wings folded against our backs, we dive down toward the rocky shore below until, suddenly, our feathered limbs snap open to catch a plume of air. Into the heavens we ascend. Here, among the clouds, we’re weightless.

Thunder crashes and rain pelts our forms, but any discomfort is obscured by our excitement, by our hunger. I lick the ocean’s salt from my lips. When we’re close enough that those aboard can hear us, I begin our song. Thelxiope, for pleasing voice.

The notes are high and drawn out, head tones that fall from my mouth and travel to the sailors’ ears. Raidne and Pisinoe join. The melody is seductive, but it’s also haunting. We pour our souls into it, and we carry so much sorrow.

The sadness of losing Proserpina. The shame of being banished. The power of our new bodies. The isolation. The beauty of our voices. The obscenity of our forms. The thrill of bringing men to heel. The hope for a different life. These sentiments rush toward the ship, but they’re not what the men aboard hear.

As it slips between thunderclaps and the howling winds, our chorus spins magic.

“Come, stop your ship so you may hear us.”

The men scatter across the deck as we approach. This ship, with only two masts, isn’t the largest that we’ve seen, but it has plenty of ears to meet our needs.

“We know all that happens on this bountiful earth…”

A few sailors who have yet to hear our notes on the wind are trying desperately to keep the vessel afloat. They work the ropes and sails to steer it through the squall as best they can, but large waves send seawater crashing over the deck and make simply standing a struggle. But once our song, and its promise, reaches them, their frantic efforts cease. Ropes fall from slackened hands; open-mouthed faces peek out from the portholes. All are rendered still. Lightning teases our forms, but the cover of night obscures our haggard, aging bodies, the danger of our talons. To them, we’re winged women dancing among the thunderheads—a sight to marvel at, not to inspire dread. Surely nothing dangerous could sing so beautifully.

I land on the deck first, followed by Pisinoe. Raidne remains in the air, uninterested in taunting them. Now they’re close enough to see our ghastly bodies, but the sailors aren’t frightened—our song has given them glimpses of the futures they crave most, and a glimpse is never enough. The man closest to me clutches his chest, devotion pooling in his dark eyes, as if he’s gazing upon Venus herself. When I take a step closer, he falls to his knees, his clasped hands raised to me in desperation. He’s not dead yet, but already, I feel myself standing taller.

Tell me, his expression begs. I reach to stroke his bearded cheek. As soon as my fingers connect with his skin, his hands rush to his chest. Then he crashes to the ground. This wouldn’t be the first time a sailor’s died overwhelmed by his own anticipation. But this man twists his body closer to me even as his heart begins to fail. I take a step back, and then another, and all the while, he claws desperately to close the gap I create between us. My wings spread wide, and I take to the air, hovering just over the ship’s edge. The wooden deck tears at his fingers as he pulls himself along, leaving scarlet stains in his wake. Good. What bloody trails of mine would he create if given the chance?

“Come,” Pisinoe sings, and another, larger sailor steps on the fallen man’s hands with a sickening crack as he rushes for her. But the sailor on the ground doesn’t scream—he still drags his broken body forward, his mouth open in awe. I can’t understand the words he says, but the meaning is clear from the desperation in his tone: Tell me my fate.

I have to swallow the violent smile that threatens to consume my features as I open my arms to him.

“Come, and I’ll tell you everything.”

The deck tries to stall him, wooden planks cutting ribbons into his clothes and marring his skin with abrasions. Pain must bloom with each shove forward, but the sailor doesn’t stop. Finally, he reaches the ship’s edge and extends a single bloodied hand as he muscles himself over it, broken fingers outstretched to me as he falls. But he doesn’t hit the waves first: His body shatters on a cluster of rocks, and then I’m soaring. Ecstasy washes over me as he’s swallowed by the brine. It’s thousands of seedlings unfurling in the spring from dormant ground; it’s being kissed by a warm summer rain. And then, for the first time in years, I take a slow, deep breath without my chest rattling. My hands form fists.

I sing even louder. And so do my sisters.

We guide the ship toward the rocks that lie in wait submerged beneath the waves between Scopuli and Castle. Like jaws cracking open bones, they do their job splitting the hull. The ship roars, and more men dive into the frothing water below. We circle overhead until the vessel is no more than shattered planks of wood, never once wavering in our melody. Some men sink beneath the surface. Others cling to floating detritus. A few attempt to swim to shore. But the waves, enraged by the storm, are too big, too powerful. They pull the men below one by one and flood their lungs with seawater, and with every single death, we grow stronger. The years dissolve from our bodies as if it’s the rain that washes them away.

There won’t be any survivors. Not having sacrifices is a disappointment, but only those who survive the churning sea make appropriate gifts for Ceres.

When the depths claim the last set of listening ears, we fly back to the cliffs. Tomorrow, our beach will be littered with corpses.

Pisinoe erupts in a triumphant laugh as soon as her feet touch the ground, and I follow her lead. Even Raidne joins, and we find one another’s hands and dance and howl in the storm, reveling in our victory. Only when the rain begins to soften do we finally return to the cottage, and I marvel at the long-forgotten vitality that now courses through my veins. Inside, I stretch my arms overhead to find that my fingertips once again brush the wooden beams that span the ceiling. Raidne’s stew still simmers on the hearth, and she rushes forward to stir it as Pisinoe follows in pursuit of the hand mirror she keeps on the mantel. It’s a scene I’ve lived an uncountable number of times before, but tonight, it blurs behind a veil of tears. I never thought I’d see this again—my two beautiful sisters, young once more, painted in the warm orange glow of a crackling fire.

While I wait for my turn with the looking glass, I run my hands over my body, relishing the feel of my own transformation beneath my palms: Taut skin where it previously sagged, free from wrinkles once more. Wiry hair made soft, and brittle talons sharpened back into blades.

“Who’s next?” Pisinoe asks eventually, but Raidne is too busy nestling her lost teeth back into place. I take a deep breath and accept the ancient mirror, lifting it slowly to find myself inside it.

A young woman stares back at me, so beautiful that I barely recognize her. The ghost of a smile graces her oval face, and I reach first to brush her lips, then my own. They’re soft and pink again, two petals parted. My fingers slip inside my mouth and gently wiggle each tooth. The bones don’t budge. The firelight highlights the dusting of freckles across my reflection’s nose and makes her blue eyes sparkle. A strange feeling washes over me as I behold myself—I’m no longer a crone, but I’m still older than I was when we were banished. We were children then, me just shy of sixteen, Raidne and Pisinoe only eighteen and seventeen, respectively. Would Proserpina recognize this woman? Would I recognize her?

“It’s your turn, Raidne.”

She turns to face me with a full, glittering smile, and a small gasp escapes her throat as she surveys herself. I force my melancholy away and enjoy the sight of her instead. Though I’ve come to appreciate the beauty in all youth, I was always the plainest of us three.

Raidne is the most beautiful, her lips a deep plum, her eyes the same color as the sky on a stormy day—a capricious and seductive gray that simultaneously draws you in while warning you to stay away. Her moody stare is supported by cheekbones that must’ve been chiseled by the gods, and when she smiles as she does now, it’s enough to make even the most sullen soul’s heart stop.

“Look at us!” Pisinoe screams, jumping to her feet in a giddy fit. “Look at us!”

“Bless the sailors,” Raidne says, her voice full of reverence. “Bless their willing ears.”

After we’ve eaten our fill of stew, Raidne kisses the tops of our heads.

“Let’s try to get some rest,” she whispers into our hair. “Tomorrow will be a full day.”

I collapse onto my pallet, and Pisinoe follows, cuddling in close. Raidne joins. Even she can’t resist the joy of the moment. Within minutes, Pisinoe snores softly beside me, and Raidne’s breath is so shallow that I barely hear it at all. But sleep doesn’t offer me its release.

I think of the men aboard the ship. How long did it take those who clung to its scraps to realize that their destiny was to drown? Did that broken sailor who flung himself from the edge understand what his fate was as he rushed toward the ocean’s surface, or was he still enraptured as his lungs filled with brine?

I hope that in their final moments, our song brings them no solace. I hope that they suffer.

We could never make Dis suffer, but we can punish the sailors in his stead.

We can lure them into the rocks with our song. We can eat the ones who wash ashore, ripping their flesh apart with our talons, tearing into their skin with our teeth. We can cut into their stomachs and inspect their bowels for signs, then slice their throats in a prayer to Ceres for forgiveness.

These images accompany me to the cusp of sleep, and my last coherent thought is how strange it is that such violence makes me smile. But I force it, and its implications, away and let sleep claim me and my monstrous musings. Tomorrow, I won’t remember them anyway.

A tangible excitement draws us out of our slumber before the sun breaks over the horizon. I wander to the window, and when I push open the shutters, the only creaking comes from their hinges. My joints are blessedly quiet once more.

A cool breeze greets me, a reminder that summer is at its end. The storm has passed, leaving behind a world glossed in a sheen of raindrops. It’s beautiful, but the damp will quicken the decomposition process. If we’re going to salvage anything, we must hurry.

Raidne gravitates to the wooden shelf beside the hearth where the tools are kept. She lifts the blades to the light one by one, letting their razor-sharp edges scintillate for us: hooked knives to skin and gut, sleeker blades to separate meat from bone, saws to dismember. Pisinoe prepares a pot of water over a fire.

“I wish we could’ve drawn them in on gentle seas,” she says, monitoring it for a boil. When bubbles burst across the water’s surface, Raidne hands each knife to Pisinoe, who gingerly deposits them into the pot. It’s important to make sure the blades are clean before we begin our work. “I want to sing for an audience during the warm afternoon sun…It’s been so long.”

We all prefer hunting to scavenging.

The knives roll in the boiling water for several minutes before Pisinoe extracts them from the pot with a hook for this purpose. Raidne has already spread a rag across the table to catch them until the metal is cool enough to the touch. Then we reach for our favorites. My gutting knife has a round wooden handle that has long since been stained a deep purple. My boning knife is the thinnest of the three, and my saw is the shortest. I tuck them into a satchel around my waist before turning to my sisters. We’re ready. Raidne leads the way over the edge of the cliff as she did last night, but this time we glide down to the beach where carnage awaits.

The ship is now thousands of fractured pieces scattered across the sand. The spaces between them are littered with its contents—everything from clothes, food, and tools to bodies.

There are dozens. All dead, all in various conditions. Some are so pulverized, their bowels torn open by coral and the meat already poisoned, that processing them isn’t an option.

Our first step is to sort them: which we can salvage, and which must burn instead.

The piles have barely grown (six too bloodied, too broken; two we can butcher) when Pisinoe shrieks from behind one of the ship’s masts. The sound slashes through the air with the same ease as a knife through skin.

“Pisinoe?” Raidne screams, worried she’s been hurt. Did a sailor survive, only to ambush her? No, that can’t be possible; they would still be enchanted by our song…

“Come quickly!”

Her voice draws us both to her side. Raidne immediately begins scouring her arms for signs of injury, but Pisinoe stands in stupefied silence. I find what caused her outburst and grab Raidne’s shoulder roughly, redirecting her attention with a trembling finger.

There, lying in the sand, is the body of a woman. For a moment, I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. In all our years here, a female body has never washed ashore. It’s always been men: men going to war, men buying and selling goods, men on an odyssey. The sight drops me to my knees beside her.

She’s wearing a woven tunic, its shoulders adorned with an intricate pattern of red, yellow, and black, made from what I first mistake as some kind of thick thread. But recognition slowly reveals that the motifs aren’t made with thread at all—they’re individually dyed porcupine quills. How many hours did it take, to stitch each one in its perfect place? The artistry takes my breath away, but then tears rise to my eyes. Something so beautiful should never have ended up here, like this. The same design lines the bottoms of her leggings, which are made from an animal hide. A deer’s, I think, though it’s been centuries since Scopuli’s allowed me to see one up close. A beaded necklace made from seashells still hangs from her neck—somehow, it survived the rocks and the waves.

The woman’s body is relatively intact, which I’m thankful for, relieved that she was not ripped open like some of the others. But this is the smallest mercy. What was she doing on the ship? I delicately tuck a few locks of long obsidian hair behind her ears and brush the sand from her tanned face. A sense of uneasiness washes over me with the feeling she wasn’t aboard the ship of her own volition. The contents of my stomach swell into my throat.

“Look.” Pisinoe gingerly lifts the woman’s hand to inspect it. A raw red ring encircles each of her wrists. “She was bound.”

Tears pool in our eyes, and we sit in the anguish that men have wreaked upon her.

“Take her from the beach,” Raidne whispers. “She deserves her own pyre.”

Pisinoe and I nod. The discovery shakes us, bringing back uncomfortable memories. We were never mortal, but such horrors aren’t reserved for the mortal realm. How many gentle dryads bore the unwanted burden of a god’s attention? Proserpina’s sacred lineage didn’t stop Dis. Pisinoe kneels beside me and scoops her arms beneath the woman’s frame and lifts her as if she’s made of air. Such is the strength of our chimeric bodies. Pisinoe unfurls her great black wings and ascends from the beach.

The day reveals six more women. We bring each to the grassy area at the forest’s edge atop the cliffs so that we can bury them properly. The men’s corpses don’t receive the same treatment. By midmorning, we finish sorting them. Fifty-four dead total, including the females.

Only eleven sailors are in good enough condition to butcher, and we start work on those first. We use the jagged rocks of the cliff face as anchors to hoist the bodies into the air, hanging them by their feet. Then we cut the clothes from the carcasses, slit their throats, and drain their blood. The fluid spurts onto the sand, staining the ground a brilliant red. Their fingers graze back and forth across the grains as we work, coloring the fleshy tips crimson.

Once the blood is entirely drained from a body, the next step is to gut it.

I carefully slide my blade into the soft skin of my first sailor’s lower abdomen, right below where a patch of thick, curly black hair begins. Starting in the wrong spot risks puncturing his stomach and spoiling the meat, but I’ve had plenty of practice. The blade scores easily down his midline to the base of his neck, but the rib cage is more difficult to overcome. The man’s lifeless eyes bulge down at the ground as if in protest; if he were alive, he’d gag on his bloated tongue. It was a gruesome sight in the beginning, but the effect hasn’t fazed me in centuries—the whole process is now more familiar than dressing a deer.

I split him open, and a hot wave hits me in the face. Good. Releasing this heat will slow the decomposition process as well. Sawing through the ribs takes a bit of effort, even with my strength returned. Their bodies are designed to protect their organs, even in death, and they don’t offer their insides willingly. I must work for them.

But with the ribs removed, the rest is straightforward. I scoop out the stomach, the lungs, the heart, the intestines, all the viscera that made him, until the cavity is empty.

All that’s left is to skin and quarter him. Everything unusable—the threadbare clothes, extra flesh, fat, and bowels—is tossed onto the pile to be burned. Once we’re finished with all the bodies, we’ll set the heap ablaze. We save this step for last, though. Everything that preceded is a necessity to cheat death; but this little violation, this final jab, is for us. Let them rot. The goal is to be profane.

Back at the hovel, our table becomes a preparation space. We cut the meat into long strips, then rub them generously with salt before stacking them inside a large crock, adding more salt between each layer. The mineral will preserve the meat for several weeks, and we’ll stretch it as long as we’re able. It’s a shame it’s early autumn and not winter. Freezing the salted meat makes it last nearly forever—in this way, we have something in common.

We work until the sun reaches its midday zenith, managing to process six carcasses. The remaining join their mangled brothers on our pyre.

We need the rest of the afternoon for what’s next. Raidne and I make our way to the bluff where we’ve laid the women. Pisinoe joins us with a bucket of water and washcloths in hand. We take care to clean them—wiping the salt from their skin, removing the sand from beneath their nails. Raidne brushes their hair, and I help Pisinoe stitch closed the tears in their clothing. Then we dress their necks and wrists with more jewels, but we leave their original ornaments in place—delicate earrings carved from animal bones, white and purple bracelets made with beads cut from clam shells. So much has already been stolen from them by the men on the beach, by the sea, and even by us. We won’t take anything else.

Once they’re ready, I delicately insert a gold coin between each set of teeth. Then we dig graves and fill them with dried wood. Raidne adds handfuls of elderberries and persimmons to each, and Pisinoe inters casks of wine. After we’ve laid each woman onto her own pyre, I place bouquets of asters and goldenrods in their hands. Then we set them ablaze. Their fires burn until the sun hangs low in the sky, and when only embers remain, we return the displaced earth and mark each site with a stone.

Back in our cottage, I light incense to lift away today’s death from our home, then Raidne prepares us a large roast with some of the fresh meat. Pisinoe pours mugs of blackberry wine, and finally, a sense of relief breaks through the exhaustion of the day. We did it. We survived.

“Want to explore the wreckage tonight?” Pisinoe asks as she picks the last bit of meat from a bone, and although I can barely move, the idea is too enticing to ignore. Our larder might be full, but there’s still hunting to be done: This time, it’s for treasure.

As with our preferences for knives, we’ve developed unique salvaging techniques over the years. Raidne is drawn to the paper items first: waterlogged books and letters written in tongues we can no longer decipher, large maps with bleeding ink. In the coming days, she’ll meticulously separate the soaked parchment pieces as best she can and hang them to dry before the fireplace, as if our home were purposefully decorated with paper garlands. At night, firelight filters through the parchment, casting strange and beautiful shadows onto the walls where they dance for us.

Pisinoe heads straight toward chests, barrels, and bags, her hawkish eyes scouring for jewelry and other valuable personal effects. She adds each new locket, golden cross, and hair ornament to her hoard as she uncovers them, admiring her image in each reflective surface she finds. This time, it’s an elaborately carved silver hand mirror. She loses herself in the swoops and curls of its filigree, unbothered bythe large crack in the glass that leaves her image shattered. She’s content to revel in the drama of it all, pretending to be the bejeweled goddess she never had the chance to become.

A salty, metallic tang hangs like a cloud over the entire scene. Whether the tinny odor is from the scattered iron nails, chains, and other metal objects from the ship or from the sailors’ blood, I can’t say. Most of the crimson sand is gone already, the violence committed here softened into pale pink by Scopuli’s lapping waves.

I prefer to take stock of each wreck in its entirety before I begin to sift through its subtleties. I move south along the shoreline, dodging the tattered wooden remnants of the ship’s bones. The wreckage gradually thins until eventually, there are hardly any artifacts at all. From here, my sisters are no more than two dots bobbing gleefully in the glow of the rising moon, treasure hunters dancing among the carnage. They’re immune to its horrors as they revel in the comfort of their first full bellies in years and in the knowledge that they won’t go hungry for months. The violence of the day does nothing to stifle the excitement that’s returned to our frames; if anything, it fuels it.

As I consider where to begin, the hair on the back of my neck rises to attention. The sensation stops my feet in the cool sand. My sisters’ laughter, so loud just moments ago, is now muffled. I feel my face pinch with confusion, but then I realize: It’s because of the air. It’s somehow heavier, and there’s a whisper of a scent mingling with the salt and brine that I can’t quite place. When I do, the breath leaves my lungs. It’s sweet, spring soil with the kiss of flowers. The way Proserpina smelled.

I know this feeling: the flutter of anticipation in my stomach, the tingling on my skin. It’s the same way I felt that time, all those years ago, when I heard—

Look.

The sound of Proserpina’s voice crashes into my back with the force of a wave. I’m no match for it, and I stumble forward into the sand. I barely manage to keep myself from falling completely, but the second I find my balance, I whirl around, heart in my throat, half expecting to see her…

But there’s only the empty shoreline.

“Proserpina?” I whisper, but my question is lost on the breeze. I force myself to stand a little taller, and when I speak again, my voice is more assured. “Look where?”

The only answer is the sound of my pounding heart. I stomp around the sand, kicking over pieces of wood, trying to find whatever it is that she wants me to see. It’s just as a curse forms on my lips that I catch sight of an object sitting on the brink of the tide. The waves lap at its edges, as if they’re trying to beckon it back into the depths. What’s it doing so far away from the rest of the ruin? Every part of my body sings with anticipation.

There. I don’t know if it’s she who speaks the word or me.

I approach cautiously, though with night setting in, my eyes can’t identify the mass until I’m nearly on top of it.

It’s a man’s corpse.

The sound of blood rushing through my ears overtakes the sound of the waves. His back is to me, his body coiled into a ball and face half buried in the surf. I press a talon to his shoulder and drag him onto his back. He’s handsome, his face colonized by a bushy red beard peppered with gray. Hisnose is crooked, but a splash of freckles makes the imperfection somehow charming. Significantly chapped lips are barely parted, as if he died hoping for drinkable water that never came. There’s a dark, bloodstained wound behind his left ear that still seeps. I observe his stillness. He looks relatively whole—another piece of meat to burn. My mouth falls open to call for Raidne and Pisinoe.

Don’t.

“Why not?”

A hoarse, desperate cough from the corpse is my answer, and I clamp a hand across my lips to ensure I don’t accidentally disobey Proserpina’s command.

This man is alive.

As if to underscore my revelation, he hacks up seawater all over himself. It splashes at my feet, and I recoil.

No one else lived. They drowned in the current or were shredded by coral before the sea deposited them on the beach. How did he survive the gauntlet? How does he continue to draw breath now?

He groans and reaches a weak, quaking hand toward me, but I step away before he can make contact. His clothes are in tatters, and his body is covered with gashes. Some look severe. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t already have an infection.

I look north to my sisters’ whirling silhouettes. A sacrifice! I should scream. I found a sacrifice! Instead, my voice lodges itself in the back of my throat and doesn’t budge.

“What do you want me to do with him?” I whisper, desperate for an answer. The longer the silence grows, the more dread pools in my stomach.

My body moves of its own accord, driven by the desire—no, the need —to hear her voice again. It’s as if I’m watching from above as a chimera of raptor and woman drags the battered man into one of Scopuli’s sea caves. Not the ritual cave, but a smaller grotto embedded in the cliffside. As soon as we’re tucked away inside the tiny alcove, my mind has a chance to catch up with my actions.

What am I doing? I should be signaling to Pisinoe and Raidne; we must offer him to Ceres—

As soon as her name materializes, I taste venom in the back of my throat. Ceres isn’t listening. How many centuries have we already wasted performing sacrifices in her name, only to be met with hateful silence in return? The lily, the ship—this man, whoever he is, was sent by Proserpina. He’s important; whether a gift, a message, or a warning, I don’t know yet, but I’ll keep him alive long enough to find out. Until her purpose reveals itself, he’s mine.

His breath is shallow and labored, rattling his chest as he exhales, but a sense of urgency tugs me away. If I’m gone much longer, Pisinoe and Raidne will trace my steps in the sand and discover my secret.

“I don’t know if you can hear me, sailor, but if you value your life, don’t stray from this spot. You’re safe here, and I’ll come back for you in the morning.”

He stirs but doesn’t wake. I leave him there, slumped against a boulder.

As I head back up the beach, I try to shake the nerves from my trembling hands.

My darling Proserpina, what will you have me do?