The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Andromeda Tree
by Rain Graves 

We sat in the valley of a red sand basin in Sudan, forgotten by wind and time. Silence was God, and we were Goddess. A single Acacia tree, leafy, with long, needle-like thorns. We stood tall and outstretched amidst the sky.  Many rusted chains wound around our trunk with locks glinting through the dust of time.  An ancient plaque with hieroglyphics sat at our roots. It read, “Do not break the Silence.”

Faint vibrations were felt in the distance, different from the musical timing of game. We’d felt elephants, hyenas, and lions for millennia. None had come to pass for a decade. There was no water.  This vibration was distinct: a human, four days away. One foot was heavier than the other, sometimes adjusting weight.

When the old man arrived, he saw the sign but couldn’t read it. We waited for each exhale of his breath, drinking in scattered emotion, torn thoughts, and the weighty feeling of unrequited love. Tears streamed down his face.  He touched a lock within our chains, fingering names. We remembered him then, a boy of 16, careful not to prick himself as he attached it. The names burned into us. “Samuel + Jessa forever: 6-18-75.”

We smelled Samuel’s desperation. The gift he had been granted by us was his life’s story; a happy one. We could see Jessa’s wrinkled face in the tears that fell to our roots. We soaked her image up and watched her die through his eyes. Our sap tightened in our veins, and Silence drew close.

We felt his doubts as he paced. Nothing had changed since 31 B.C., when a young, desperate Queen had come to conceal her much-loved soldier from a rival. My Queen, my soldier. Myself, my Silence. This, our ancient, lost tomb.

At twilight, Samuel pulled a heavy terra cotta urn from his pack. He reached inside, holding a fist full of dust. Silence covered us like a heavy, purple cloak. We inhaled the scent of Jessa’s burnt bones. As he dusted our roots with her, we felt her horror. She was still in them. Samuel had said the words as she burned.

His bare feet circled us, stepping on fallen thorns. He leaned into the pain, in penance. Her tiny pieces begged him to stop. She could not rally her being. Samuel’s words kept her separate, incomplete. She had not been wrapped in linen or protected. The Jackal had not been called.

Samuel finished and set the jar down. Silence grew thick and windy, waiting. A storm brewed in the desert. Four claps of thunder cracked, like the beat of Ibis wings. Lightening forked a path toward us.  For a moment, we thought he wouldn’t speak. Samuel gathered his entire being, clenched his fists, and screamed. The sky opened up for the Ibis, a looming, terrifying creature. It snatched him up by the shoulders, and met my outstretched limbs in the belly of the star-lit sky.

Silence deafened us, feeling freedom. I trudged my roots upward, out of quicksand. My bark scraped flesh, breaking apart. Chains tore at my waist. I gripped them, lock by lock, shards of nails tearing them apart.

My eyes spiked lightning into Samuel as the Ibis dropped him onto my branches, thorns catching on skin, poking through to organs. I tore muscle from bone, sinking my needle-teeth deep into him, seeking my prize: The unweighed heart. The Ibis did the business of taking his soul above me, into the eye of the storm. Into the Silence.

With each step, Jessa’s dust sunk deep into the red desert. Her bones knitted into roots, growing. Silence slipped from my tether. For the first time in several thousand years, I was alone. Fatigue took me and I slept, not caring about anything but that I was free.

***

When the eye of the sun rose, it burned upon the red sand. Dried blood crusted the corners of the young woman’s mouth. A man lay next to her. She did not wake him. She looked up at the small, spindly tree a few paces away. A baboon was in its branches, eating forbidden fruit. It pointed down at the plaque, “Do not break the silence.” This time, in Swahili.

The lost Queen smiled, roused her Roman soldier, with a finger to her lips. They stood and walked away from the Acacia tree and the Silence, souls unweighed, yet again.

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Fiction © Copyright Rain Graves
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Rain Graves:

Rain Graves is a two-time Bram Stoker Award winner (2002, 2013). Her book, BARFODDER: Poetry Written in Dark Bars and Questionable Cafes was lauded as “Bukowski meets Lovecraft…” in 2009. She lives and writes in Houston, Texas.

If you’d like to learn more about Rain, you can visit her on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/raingraves/ or her website at: www.RainGraves.com