9
"Sit still, Rabbit!”
It was the turn of winter, a chill woven through the trees that made my teeth chatter as Francesca gripped my shoulder, pressing the sharp point of an ink-covered needle into the sensitive skin of my sternum.
She had ground charcoal into dust, adding water and stirring as though making a sacred potion.
I was nervous, as she dipped the tip of the makeshift tool into the black slurry, but her excitement sloughed my reservations.
“It hurts, Frannie,” I complained, inhaling sharply through the pain that sliced through me with each poke.
The winter air nipped at my cheeks, sharp as broken glass, and the scent of damp earth clung to our clothes. Each prick of the needle sent tiny shivers through me, and I could feel my heartbeat echoing in my sternum as if the tattoo itself had taken root inside me.
“It will be over soon. And then, we’ll be together forever,” she said with a knowing grin.
I would have done anything for her, to please her, to keep her.
“There, finished,” she said, sitting back on her heels, nodding for me to look at her work.
A simple outline now adorned the space between my breasts.
Low enough I could cover it, but close enough to my heart that the ink tied them together.
A hellebore flower. Our favourite bloom.
The Christmas rose, that blossoms even when everything around it dies. Like us, she had said.
They sprinkled the forest like stardust, thriving in spaces where nothing else would grow. Deep maroon, dusty pink or crisp white petals catching the light that burst through the tree canopy overheard.
I remembered the day we discovered a thick tapestry of them beyond the creek, fingers sticky with sap and dirt, laughter echoing like water over river stones.
We pressed each bloom carefully in our journals, whispering made up incantations for protection and mischief.
Except instead of our fingers being touched by magic, their tips blossomed with blisters.
We spent days tending our wounds, swearing never to touch them again – but we did. We couldn’t help ourselves.
Now the memory stings like a fresh wound – a reminder how even flowers that survive winter frost can be torn from the earth.
Francesca ran her finger down her chest, gliding her fingertip to where her own tattoo rested beneath her laced corset.. “Now you and I are tied to each other. Forever. No matter what waits for us.”
Francesca’s fingers lingered against her body longer than necessary, blinking at me through thick lashes as my pulse thrummed in my ears. I felt a strange tether form between us, tighter than the thread of blood that now tied our tattoos together.
“What do you mean?” I had asked, a strange flurry of nerves beginning to swarm beneath the tender tattoo.
“Something’s waiting for us out there, isn’t it? There must be more than this. More than just the trees. There’s whispers, if you listen close enough at night. They’re calling for us, Heather. I know it’s time to leave,” she said, wistfully watching the branches sway beyond the hideout.
“You do still want to leave, don’t you?”
I nodded, swallowing through a dry lump that had made its home in my throat.
Francesca was always a dreamer – wanting more than what life in the community offered. But this felt dangerous. Ominous and confusing, and it made my stomach twist whenever she spoke of what might come next.
I didn’t want transcendence. I wanted freedom. With her.
“We should leave the night of the winter feast, while our parents are busy. They won’t notice us missing. It’s the perfect time.”
There was an eagerness to her, but not in the usual way. It seemed darker, pressing and fortified with urgency.
“Are you sure? What if they follow us?”
As much as I wanted to leave, to be free of this place, I still felt a vein of hesitation running beneath my skin. It tugged tighter when the daydreaming began to feel possible, when it began to become real.
“Just trust me,” Francesca cooed, narrowing her eyes. “I’ll be at the hideout at midnight; we’ll walk to the road and hitch a ride to the city.”
She traced the edge of a fern leaf with the tip of her finger; eyes cast to the sky. I pictured her thoughts, the way she foresaw our future laid ahead of us.
“I don’t know…” I whined, reluctant.
“Heather,” she snapped, sparking a prickle of tears in the corner of my eyes.
She rarely spoke unkindly to me, but when she did, it felt like the world ruptured beneath me, ready to swallow me whole.
“Just grow up. You need to stop being such a child, scared of everything. Of the world. Of change. Meet me there, I’ll have a surprise for you.”
She sighed then, exhaling the tension threaded through the tips of her shoulders. Relaxing back against the rocky hillside, picking petals from wildflower stems absentmindedly.
“A surprise?”
“A secret,” she said quietly, her voice near a whisper beneath the wind.
“You have a secret? Tell me!”
I shimmied closer to her, readying myself to carry the weight of her burden.
“No. I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
My heart smarted then, a sudden ache gripping my rib cage.
“Why can’t you tell me yet?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment.
“Because, I said,” she smirked, her eyes glistening in the narrow moonlight.
“Why not now? I want to know,” I urged, displeased with her taunting.
We had never kept secrets from one another. That was our pact since infancy. We had made a blood oath for it in our adolescence, swearing to the earth that no matter what, we would always trust in the other. Pricked fingertips pressed together with earnest, assuring our loyalty.
“I can’t tell you, because it isn’t my secret alone,” she confessed, her lip curling into a satisfied smirk. She was enjoying it – hiding something from me.
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“It must be a rather serious confession, if you can’t tell me right now,” I admitted.
And while the bitterness of anger sat atop my tongue, I understood. For I had my own secret I couldn’t share. Something wicked that festered and swelled behind my ribs.