This is the second installment in my serialized release of Indigo, a fantasy fiction story written by me! You can read the first two installments here and here.
Bedtime Stories - Indigo | Chapter Three
A moth’s fluttering wing, as soft as a kiss, was what woke Clio from her decade of sleep. For a moment, she felt peaceful, content in the warm embrace of her tomb. As if she were a swaddled child.
But she couldn’t open her eyes. They felt unbearably heavy, bound and crusted. Her whole body was stiff and dead as stone. Fear began to take hold, and questions arose. In that moment she couldn’t remember her own name, let alone what had led her to this state. She wanted to see what was holding her, pinning her to one spot. As panic rose within her she forced herself to pry apart her eyelids. Something sharp scraped against them but she forced her eyelids up despite the thorns tearing at her skin. With a cry of pain, they were finally open.
At first she was blinded by light and blood. She attempted to blink it away. When the blood finished dripping from her eyes, Clio felt a sinking feeling that had her wishing she had never stirred. She was trapped in a net of branches and vines. Gnarly, twisting sticks held her tightly in place and fresh green shoots sought to cover the gaps. Knotted twigs and thorns decried her every breath, attempting to subdue her back into sleep. As she attempted to move, her limbs woke up, each in pain and tightly trapped in living wood.
It was then that Clio knew where she was and what had happened. She had been buried alive.
Not in the ground, no, but given the burial of her people, the tree folk– placed inside a hollow tree as a host through which the tree could regain its life. The tree would use her body as a fertile soil, to grow around and into her, to nurture sprouts from her skin as it pulled her in. We will all become ashes and soil someday, young one, they had told her. But the trees give us air. They deserve us fresh.
How long had she been asleep? How long had she been in this grave? Her entire body ached. Every slight movement made her joints grind as if she had turned to rocks. With each inhalation she could feel a new puncture or scrape. The pain was nearly blinding, but her desperation was far stronger. She had to get out. She did not want to be consumed. She wriggled and gasped, still unable to escape. The tree was digging its tendrils into her, already claiming her.
No. She was not gone yet.
Clio summoned all her power, all her obstinance. With one final attempt to escape, she found the strength to push her arms through the branches. Her body screamed. She felt hot blood dripping down her arms as the branches scraped against her, desperate to keep their host within their grasp. But she could feel the fresh air. She kicked her feet through, and tore away at the greedy vines until finally she fell to her knees, naked and covered in blood, in front of the tree. She stayed there, sobbing, shocked, heaving great breaths until she had pumped her lungs full of the life she had been deprived.
Every sense felt exaggerated. She was all too aware of the blood coursing through her veins, the pinpricks of the debris she was kneeling on, her own lungs filling with air and then emptying, the smell of must and rot. The light was so bright and her eyes so fragile that she couldn’t yet comprehend her surroundings. The tree behind her groaned in its agony, its branches reaching out to her.
Gradually Clio was able to look down at her fingers, which were pressed into dirt and stones and fallen leaves. Her fingertips touched the edge of a patch of mushrooms. Blood dripped off her hands, creating a muddy puddle in the dirt. On the back of her hands were small offshoots– tiny branches of the tree growing from within her. Along her arms were more– these ones had grown into leafing branches.
In horror, she ran her fingers along these branches, following them up toward her chest. There, there were more, sprouting from her clavicle and twining around her shoulders.
How much of her had the tree claimed? How deeply had its roots dug into her body? Memories and emotions began flooding back. This was Clio’s punishment. She had abandoned her people, abandoned the trees, and set out into the world on her own. When she had returned, seeking their help, they said she needed to learn respect. She needed to reconnect with her roots. They claimed it was symbiosis– a rite of purity and sacrifice. A baptism to cleanse her from the outside world.
Clio slowly lifted her head. She was in the forest of her youth. Enormous trees surrounded her. It was autumn. The leaves fell, yellow and brown. The ground was slick with decay as the earth reclaimed the season’s winnings. The air was thick with mist and cotton.
It all weighed on her so heavily. She could feel the branches growing from her pulling her back into the ground, into the tree, into sleep. Perhaps she could just lay down over the roots, reclaim her strength–
No. She wasn’t going to go back.
She tried to pool together her pain into focus, to make her eyes see the situation with clarity. The mushrooms, wet with dew… she should eat. She should drink.
But her hands. Those branches… were they growing out of her or into her? Clio, still on all fours, reached one hand over to her other. With shaky breath, she wrapped her fingers around the offshoot coming from her skin, holding it as tightly as she could.
She snapped it off.
Her cry of pain echoed through the woods, sending birds flying up into the sky. Blood poured from where Clio had broken off the branch. The sprout had grown from her, and was as much part of her as her own limbs and fingers. She gasped and cried as the pain shot through her body, throbbing with reverberations that drowned out her thoughts.
The entire forest of trees groaned and rocked and shook their leaves, protesting this betrayal from their daughter. The ground beneath Clio writhed as the tree behind her leaned back. Clio was no longer a symbiote– she was a forest parasite.
But she could not stop now. The branches were invasive. Cancerous. Taking from her body when she had given no permission. And she could not bear to be part of the trees that so greedily consumed her, or the society that had put her there. She was not dead, not dirt. Not yet.
So she gathered up her strength once more, and grabbed the branch growing from her arm.
With a loud snap she broke it away. Blood gushed from the wound, steaming against the cold air, and ran hot down her naked body. She gulped for air, her lungs on fire from their atrophy.
Yet she couldn’t stop now.
With shaking hands, she grabbed another branch sprouting from her skin. Crack. And another. Crack. She needed everything gone. Crack!
Though it took mere moments, it felt like an eternity. When it was finally done, Clio fell to the ground, her blood pooling around her, and sobbed from the pain.
Upon waking, Clio instinctually wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the knotted scars left behind from her burial. She held tight as she took control of her breath, forcing herself back to calm.
It was still dark outside– not just dark, but black as pitch. The sliver of moon just barely highlighted the outline of objects below. The morning was still far off.
She was about to lay back down, but something tugged at her senses. A cursory glance around the small room showed nothing out of order, and the night outside was calm– but someone was looking back at her. Clio peered out the window to see Dezo standing still and patient outside. Their eyes met and he was unsurprised. He just nodded slowly, and then put his hand across his chest– a greeting in the Pryntell tradition.
Clio felt suspended in time. She laid back down, looking up into the darkness, considering. Dezo had said he sold his harvest in Pryntell, before. But still, what could he have known? Could he have divined her lack of humanity?
The only thing to do was act. The air outside her blankets was crisp and cold. Clio laced her boots and wrapped herself in her cloak with hardly a sound before creeping down to the main floor of the inn. The air was thick with sleep, seemingly padding her sounds. She managed to open the door with just the slightest creak.
Once outside, Clio pulled her cloak tighter around herself, and looked back to where she had seen Dezo. The cloud of her warm breath obscured him, but there he was– walking silently toward her.
Clio motioned for him to follow her. Silently, they walked round the building, away from the faint moonlight, to the dark stable.
The building was warm from the heat of animal’s bodies and insulation of hay. The animals hardly stirred.
Clio took a deep breath and turned to Dezo, who looked at her patiently.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” Dezo said. His rich voice was calm and musical, but did nothing to smooth the rough edges of Clio’s anxiety. “I knew you’d respond to me if my assumptions were correct,” he continued.
“What assumptions were those?” Clio asked.
“I believe you’re one of the tree folk.” He leaned against the wall. “And if not, there would be no harm done and you’d be asleep and I’d go back to my own warm home. But it appears I was right.”
Clio didn’t say anything, not wanting to confirm his suspicions. Dezo smiled gently. “Do not worry. I’ve neither the fear of a bigot nor the fascination of an exoticist.”
“Then why seek me out?”
Dezo’s face grew somber, though not unfriendly.
“I did not speak the truth earlier, about my days in Pryntell,” he said, measuring his words carefully. “I did more than sell harvests there. I was apprenticed to a botanist, though just briefly.”
He paused, gauging Clio’s reaction, and then pressed on. “I was within the city walls when they sent soldiers out to face the threat of the North. I was there when none returned… but you.”
His eyes shone intensely as he looked to her for confirmation. Clio stared back at him. Could it be true? The silence burned between them, and Clio desperately attempted to maintain control of her breath. None had returned, but she had, and she had been thrown from the city because of the truths she told, persecuted throughout the countryside, and then buried alive in the land of her people… all because she came back when no one else did.
Clio pressed her hand to her chest, as if to contain her heart. Only upon seeing Dezo’s curious look did she remember that she had not put on her gloves, and that her scars were on full display. But the man did not seem perturbed or disgusted. He looked at her sympathetically.
“I heard the rumors about the bodies found on the battlefield…” he whispered at last. “They said you were a heretic. Treasonous. Yet I… I always suspected you were right. Especially when they threw the outsiders, like me, out of the city. I believed you.”
Clio nodded, humbled by his words, though she had none of her own.
Dezo cleared his throat. “I wanted to meet with you now, under the cover of night, so that I would not raise any suspicions with the others,” he said. “And because I have something I wish to show you. Tomorrow, when you come to our smithy. If you are willing.”
“I am,” Clio said, almost surprised that she found herself able to speak again. “I appreciate your discretion.”
“Of course,” he responded, bowing slightly. He took a step toward the stable door. “For now we should sleep.”
Clio mirrored his bow, and nodded. They stepped outside, both giving each other one last look. Clio noticed that Dezo’s calmness had radiated over to her, though his unspoken urgency had as well. Her eyes now used to the dark, she looked at his face in the moonlight, and the near-imperceptible wrinkles on his deep brown skin– lines from smiles, but also from worry.
“Tomorrow,” she confirmed in a whisper.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
They went their separate ways, into the dark.
Clio woke to the smell of bread and tea, the air against her cheek crisp with spring cold. Her mind was foggy with exhaustion; she did not fall back asleep easily. And yet, the sun was just peeking over the horizon. Elsewhere in the pub, she could hear the innkeeper’s baby babbling happily.
The innkeeper had left a pitcher of warmed water outside Clio’s door. She took it back to the basin in her room and began cleaning hands and face. The water soothed the scars on her arms and chest. Two years on, they had healed as much as they could, and now looked like tree knots embedded in her skin. Slight, leaf-like veins extended from each knot, texturing her skin oddly.
As Clio dressed, she was careful to cover the scars, gently wrapping her scarf around her neck and shoulders, and pulling fingerless gloves over her hands.
Seated at the long table for a breakfast of spring berries and fresh bread, Clio played with the Inkeeper’s baby to soothe her own apprehension. The chubby little thing had rose red cheeks and a single tooth. When Clio tickled the baby’s belly it laughed uncontrollably, its legs kicking with excitement.
After breakfast, she quickly donned her bag and headed out, telling the innkeeper she was off to get her tools repaired. The little town was all bustle and business, and while a few familiar faces waved hello to Clio, they all hurried on their way, focused on the tasks at hand.
As she neared the door Dezo had pointed out to her the previous night, she could smell the smoke and metal coming from the smithy. She knocked firmly.
The door opened, and Clio heard Dezo’s greeting, welcoming her inside his home. But all sound was lost on her, and all sight, too– except for the dark purple flowers sitting on his table.