2. A Good Sleep
a good sleep
Every step I take is a battle between the two halves of what I’ve become. Where my left foot falls, the moss turns to a black, oily sludge that smells of wet earth and decaying wood. And where my right foot brushes the ferns, they uncurl into a rampant, green hunger, sprawling over the meadow.
“I’m making a mess of things, Droot,” I mutter, ducking my head to avoid a low-hanging oak branch.
He doesn’t seem bothered. He bobs along the trail like a white dandelion caught in a breeze.
The meadow doesn’t mind, he shoots back. It’s been waiting for a gardener. Even if you’re a messy one.
We reach a place where the trees grow so thick the sunlight only hits the ground in golden needles. In the center sits an ancient tree, its roots twisted into a throne of bark and lichen.
Sitting there is a rabbit larger than I’ve ever seen, her fur the color of harvest wheat. She watches me with eyes that look like they’ve seen the world begin and end a dozen times.
Droot bounds toward her, squeaking excitedly in my mind.
Mama! Mama! I found him. The one you said. He gave me my name. I’m Droot. Like root and droplet, Mama!
She descends from the throne, approaching me calmly. She sniffs the grass near my foot.
So you did, little one. Her voice hums in my mind, much steadier than Droot’s. You brought the grave-tender. And he bloomed. How rare.
I don’t understand a word she just said.
“You… You can talk too?”
To those who can hear.
I sink to the ground, and she hops forward, nose tilted toward my heart.
Someone was very greedy this time around, she observes sadly. They wanted the beginning and the end in one vessel. You can hear me because you’re a Solvernah. (Fertility reaper)
“What does that mean?”
She settles back onto her hind legs.
It means you bloom and bane. Growth and rot. Most who rise as you did crumble to ash within breaths. Those who survive a day become mindless, walking decay. But here you are—whole. Someone very special must have pulled some strings.
“Why? Why am I different?”
Because you are tethered. Somewhere, your other half waits. Without her, you would have rotted like the rest.
My heart clenches.
Another half? I don’t even know where I am—how am I supposed to find her?
“Her?”
The one who smells like your spring. My son senses her. She sleeps, but she pulls you toward her even now. Find her, Solvernah, before the balance tips.
Her amber eyes study the center of my chest.
I see you, she whispers. The humans have names for the skin, but the earth has names for the spirit.
I look down at my body. At the green skin, and leaves sprouting from my arms.
“And what does the earth call me? A monster? A mistake?”
No, she says softly, reaching out to thump a heavy paw against my knee. The earth calls you by the scent of the leaves that survive the frost. The herb that eases pain and clears the mind. She pauses.
You are Sage.
The name feels like a key sliding into a rusted lock. It may not tell me who I was, but it tells me what I am.
“Sage,” I whisper, testing the weight of it. My voice doesn’t rumble like an earthquake this time. It sounds… peaceful.
Go now, Sage, the mother rabbit says, tucking her paws back under her honey-colored fur. The peonies have been waiting longer than you know. Only you have the breath to wake her.
* * *
We’ve been walking for hours. Maybe longer. Time feels slippery when you have no memory of it. The forest begins to thin. The trees here are older, their bark bleached like exposed bone. Even the ground is silent beneath my feet, as if it were sleeping.
Sage? Droot’s small voice calls. Why did the growing stop?
Something isn’t right. The trees thin ahead, opening into a clearing. I push through the last of the silver branches, and something moves at the edge of my vision.
Droot goes rigid on my shoulder. Sage—
I freeze. Droot’s claws dig into the green flesh of my shoulder, his tiny heart hammering against my neck.
Something staggers in our direction. It may have been a man once. Thick, oily black vines wrap around its frame, weaving in and out of its ribcage, pulsing with a sluggish heartbeat that makes a wet squelching sound in the silence.
Schlorp-thud. Schlorp-thud.
It has no face. Where eyes should be, there are only clusters of pale, sightless fungi. In place of a mouth, there’s a slow dripping curve of the same black sludge, leaking onto the sleeping earth, killing the soil on contact.
“Is that…” I whisper. “What I was supposed to be?”
No tether, Droot whispers, his voice trembling in my mind. No spring. Only hunger.
The creature turns, its movements jerky and unnatural, like a puppet swinging on rotten strings. I see no ears, but I think it can feel me.
It lets out a wet, wheezing rattle of air.
It lunges gracelessly, falling short of us. It moves with the frantic desperation of something that’s starving.
I don’t want to kill it. If it weren’t for the sleeping woman I haven’t even met yet, that hollow, screaming thing would be me.
“How do I help you?” I ask, while it searches the ground aimlessly for something to eat.
The creature doesn’t answer. It gives a violent, wet shudder instead.
At the sound of my voice, the black vines across its chest begin to distend, swelling as they gorge on the sludge inside its ribs. They tighten until I think they may break the creature in half.
The ribcage of vines snaps open like the jaws of a monstrous man-eating plant. The black tendrils shoot outward, lined with jagged thorn-like teeth. They pulse as they attempt to pull me into the hollow center of its chest.
Hungry, the thought scrapes against my brain. Fill… the… void...
I throw my arm up to shield Droot, and the creature’s vines wrap around my forearm with a gurgling, suction sound.
The black sludge eats into my skin, thorns digging deep to seek the marrow. It burns. Agony flares up my shoulder. As the creature tries to swallow my arm into its chest, I reach out my other hand and rest it over where his heart should be.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice thick. “The hunger ends now.”
I give him every ounce of warmth coursing through my body. It’s like pouring sunlight into a pit of shadows.
The black vines begin to blossom, jagged thorns softening, curling back into tender green leaves.
The creature lets out one last sound—a soft, exhaled sigh of relief.
The vines that were once his body weave into the soil, finally sinking into the tether they had spent a lifetime searching for.
I pull my arm back, the puncture wounds already sealing over with new green skin. The air in the clearing smells like a garden after a summer rain.
He is quiet now, Droot pulses, his little head peeking out from my neck. No more cold. You gave him a good sleep.
I stare at the vines, my hands trembling. “It shouldn’t have been like that for him.”