They began, all three, with their practical talk. About effort. About patterns. About how every burden became someone elseβs once it touched my hands. About how I could stand, fight, choose, act, and simply did not.
It was a disgusting scene. I was being attacked while already distressed.
I sank to my knees, partly because of the emotion, partly because it was a more striking position from which to speak, and told them plainly that if they truly cared for me, they would understand that I was the one most harmed by all this pressure. That my whole life had been a series of cruelties leading to this very brink. That which looked like hesitation was in fact profound injury. That if they loved me, believed in me, respected my pain, then they would enter the dark first and make the way safe.
There was a long silence.
The scarred woman turned away.
The broad one spat into the dirt.
The youngest looked almost sad.
Then they left.
I shouted after them, of course. Any man would. I named them traitors. I reminded them of all I had shared with them. I told them they would regret treating me this way when I finally triumphed despite their abandonment.
The hill answered with a groan, and then the ground shifted under me.
Stones came loose and fell inward into the dark. A rank breath rose from below, hot and rotten, as if the earth had been keeping some ancient grievance alive in its belly. Two enormous eyes opened beneath the roots. Not yellow. Not red.
White.
Blind white, filmed with old hunger.
The creature that rose from the pit had no majesty to it at all. It was long and pale and hideous, like a worm fed on graves. Its mouth was round and full of inward-pointing teeth. I could smell damp soil and old milk and the underside of overturned things.
I did what any persecuted man would do – I called for help.
I called for the companions who had failed me.
For my mother, though she had started all of this.
For the widow, the stable hand, the cooperβs daughter, every soul who had ever claimed to care and then cruelly expected something in return.
The beast lowered its face to mine.
And in the slick white skin of it I saw myself reflected, stretched and trembling and small.
Then it spoke. Not with words exactly, but with a recognition so foul I nearly wept.
It knew me.
It knew every pebble I had worshipped into a mountain.
Every sigh I had polished into persecution.
Every eye-roll I had taken as license to do nothing forever.
Every mess I had dragged toward the nearest tender-hearted fool and called proof of how difficult my life was.
It knew, and because it knew, it opened its mouth.
Even then, I might have changed.
Even then, with that pit yawning before me and my own reflection shaking in its wet white face, I might have stood. I might have drawn my sword. I might have said: ” Yes, this is mine. Yes, I made this. Yes, no one can climb into my skin and choose for me.”
But that is a hard, ugly kind of magic, and I have never cared for ugly things when a speech will do.
So I pointed toward the path where the others had vanished and said, βThis happened because they left me.β
The beast shuddered as if delighted.
Then the ground broke.
