hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She is restless by nature, with yearning in her veins and wanderlust in her heart. It comes from the years of early solitude, of belonging to nothing but the lonely in-between places. The longer she stays here the stranger it feels, and although it is not a bad feeling, it is sometimes unsettling. To have spent half of her life learning to accept that she would never have family, that she did not deserve it, that she would never know the peace of safety, of belonging, and then one day have that world turned upside down and all those truths torn apart is something that is not easily accepted. It is even harder to believe. So there will always be that sliver of doubt wedged like infection into the flesh of her heart and she will never, never know how to heal it.
When she had woken from a fitful sleep to find that Offspring had gone and the boys had disappeared to carve out a quiet place from the bruised dark of the night, it had been all too easy to slip through the narrow tundra gate and fade away into the cold, silver starlight. She hadn’t known where it was her feet carried her, especially now with her belly so full, so thick, so swollen with child, but it hadn’t mattered. She had spent every year of her early life like a ghost trapped within a world that couldn’t quite see her. Drifting without direction was something she knew well. But about the same time she realized that her heart carried her home to her mother, to forests beneath the chambers mountain range, she realized, too, that she had been followed. But neither Argo nor Nevi were easily deterred by her appeals for them to go back home, that she would join them soon, so on they went together.
It was slow going for Isle, but slower still for Argo who she noticed lagged quietly behind, though always without complaint. Nevi tended to stay by his shoulder and they shared in the easy quiet as though their understanding of each other ran well beyond verbal conversation and spoken word. Still, Isle could not shake the uneasiness she felt when after each break they took, Argo still did not seem to bounce back from the weariness that seemed to drape over him like shadow. So they continued on and took much pleasure and refuge from the company of their wild red grandmother, of Isle’s mother, Oksana. They stayed nearly a day and Oksana drew them to her with the same amount of fierce possessiveness she directed at everything these days. But as morning bled pink across the sky and they blinked sleep from tired, content eyes, they knew this visit had come to a close.
It wasn’t until they had cleared the mountains and entered the belly of the forest that everything fell apart. She should have known by the gnawed on carcasses of those lost in the wars, should have known by the stink of wet dog that clung to the moss on the trees and the pale bellies of the leaves on the lower plants. But she was foolish, so foolish, and it wasn’t until the small pack had surrounded them that she realized something, everything, was wrong. It was reflexive the way she and Nevi fell into place to defend their beautiful black and white boy, reflexive when they used their bodies to shield his already fading self from claws and snapping teeth. There was hardly a fight at all, nothing drawn out once the mottled white wolves realized this prey would not be easily felled, but Isle saw the way they looked at her baby, at her fragile Argo. She would’ve skinned them all if she could. All shaken and sporting various injuries, they kept moving, none of them slowing until they had cleared the edge of the shadowy forest.
In the watery light of day, it was easier to see the damage the wolves had left. Isle had a spot on her dark neck where teeth had managed a shallow hold and peeled back skin and fur to reveal something pink and sticky and dripping beneath it. It felt thick and swollen and entirely on fire, and there were pains in her shoulder and stomach from using her body like a wall. Nevi seemed even worse off, and there were punctures torn into his leg where he had kicked a wolf away from them, a slash open by claws in the fleshy part by his flank. But as she drew close and showered them in anxious affections, tracing her lips across the plains of their dark flesh, her heart unclenched just a little when she was certain the wolves hadn’t landed any fatal blows on either of her sons.
They didn’t rest long, none of them felt comfortable anymore, and although Argo looked like he might fall off his feet at any moment, they pushed on. But the pain in her stomach grew and grew until she realized quite belatedly that it was not an injury suffered by the wolves, but rather that her newest child was on their way. They made it just past the Falls territory and hid themselves at the edge of one of the herdlands in time for Isle to surrender to her body and turn their three into four. The birth was uncomplicated, and though all of them were hurt and exhausted and struggling with wounds that leeched strength from them, they were up and moving again by the following morning. Australis was a beautiful thing, all wide, bright eyes and exuberance, and she in no way understood what strange circumstances she had been born into. She was obedient though, only now, only in this newness, and she remained pressed against Isle’s hip as they finished the journey back up the mountain and to the safety of home.
Isle sees him immediately, and the desperate ache to curl into the safety of his embrace nearly chokes her. But even at this distance she can trace those rigid lines of tension racing along his dark, feathered body, can see the sharpness in his expression when those red eyes burn holes into her delicate face. She exchanges a wordless look with Nevi as they file through the gate, her stomach tightening at the way Argo moves sluggishly beside him. With the soft of her white nose, she pushes Australis along behind them, and the sleepy filly obliges without fuss, tucking herself against Nevi as the trio disappear. Only when all three have gone does Isle close her eyes and steel herself for the storminess that she can almost feel seeping off of her feathery king. When she opens her eyes again they are dark and bruised with swelling torment, but she lowers her neck and approaches the black tattooed stallion with a reluctance that hurts her heart. She stops close but not beside him, leaving cold, open space between them, and trying futilely to hide the wound on her neck from him. But even if he can’t see it, he will notice the pink smears against the whites on her body, tokens of smaller wounds, and smell the copper stink of blood and ruined flesh where it collects in a wet mat around the flayed open skin of her neck.
For a long moment she can say nothing, and her shame burns hotter than any fever when her thoughts drift back to Nevi and Argo and how her selfishness had put them in needless danger. The silence is oppressive, she is drowning in it, drowning in more exhaustion than she has known in her whole life, so in a voice that is barely a whisper, so brittle and broken and carved from the truths in her aching heart she says, “I'm no good for this family.”
Isle
