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My heart seizes, my pulse quaking from the first time I’ve seen my father in years. The last time was nearly five years ago when I was twenty-four. My gut twists. My heart aches for more reasons than one.
He’s always been an imposing figure with that primal magnetism that has always commanded respect. Or fear. If heran around with a chainsaw, wearing skinned faces, it would have made him less terrifying…and easier to hate.
Tonight was the first night I felt true fear of my father. And no matter how much I hated him, I could never stop the love growing like thorny weeds in my heart. The kind of love that hurts because of how much his violence carved through my soul like he carved his bones.
He was the greatest demon I could never expel from my blood.
With my nails raking into the bark of the nearby tree, I flick my eyes between little me and Zachariah as he digs up the ground on the edge of a group of stones about the size of baby heads. Grim determination sets his jaw.
Ice congeals my blood when he unearths a skeleton with a thin, barren thicket of white strands. A twisted smile forms on one side of his mouth. He looks up and beckons little me closer. “Come here, flower. I have something to show you.”
The ache grows deeper as I watch my younger self approach, her eyes filled with curiosity and fear.
Zachariah’s voice is eerily gentle. “You don’t remember your mother, Zenya, but this is what happens when someone tries to take you away from me.”
Bone-curdling horror grew in her eyes, the same horror I feel now for that little girl who learned what happened to her mother for the first time. After I asked about her when I was six, my father’s eyes had turned black as pitch.
He took my hand, squeezed it with a smile, then carried me outside to a tiny wooden shed that used to be an outhouse. His eyes were so tranquil when he nudged me inside, closed the door, and locked it with a chain.
For two days, in the isolation of that small, dark shed with spiders tickling my skin and garter snakes slithering around me, I learned never to ask again. To make sure I didn’t get sick, hebrought me some burnt toast and a few cups of pumped well water.
Heaviness overcomes my spirit—like rocks sinking in my stomach.
I learned how to dig in that shed. I memorized my father’s body language when he locked me inside, knowing how many days he intended to keep me in there. He’d always check on me at dawn, but he never knew how I’d escape at night—just to feel the wind on my face and hear the leaves rustling, the tree branches cracking with their own language.
There was nowhere to go. Miles upon miles of nothing but farmland and open meadows. Nowhere to run where he couldn’t find me. The first time I tried, he tied me to his “Bone Tree”. Between the clacking bones, like organic wind chimes, and the distant coyote howls, I had very little sleep—broken by intermittent nightmares.
Whenever he’d release me from the shed, he’d give me a handful of lemon drops followed by a home-cooked meal and a bubble bath. I hate taking baths to this day.
The present jerks me back. My father’s cold, remorseless gaze turns to little me. She jumps when he snaps the phalanges and the hyoid before he places the bundle of smaller bones in her hand. “These are from your mother. It’s time for you to learn how to create something with these. For you and you alone, Zenya.”
After placing a carving knife in my younger self’s hand, his expression darkens. “Now, practice. And make me proud.”
My adult heart breaks for my younger self, the weight of my father’s cruelty pressing down on me.
As he starts to walk away, leaving her alone with the corpse and the sandbox, I needle my eyes upon him, watching him head for his workshop. Wrath rears up inside me, electrifying all my nerve endings and triggering my hands to clench into fists.
The moment I turn to follow him, a familiar voice resounds in my head,No, Zenya,Eclipse warns me.You can’t change your past. It’s not how you’ll win the Trial.
Screw the Trial!I want to scream as I dig my foot into the ground while my father closes the door to his workshop. I’m older now, more powerful. If I can stop the weeds from taking root…
Zenya, listen…her voice grows more urgent.Just say one thing for me. Just whisper: it’s time to play.
“It’s time to play?” I question, giving voice to the words.
The dark and cruel edges of this reality melt into a dreamlike haze. I feel myself slipping through an almost imperceptible veil, a boundary in my mind like I felt before when Eclipse took over.
This time…she’s with me in the stillness.
I’m semi-aware of how my limbs are moving, my body returning to the sandbox.
The other half of me is too connected to this inner landscape where it reminds me of one great blanket fort. But a gray netting of fog swirls along the edges, trimming the dark fort in gray.
Eclipse stands next to me. She is similar to what I imagined, eerily familiar like I’ve met her in my dreams or fantasies, which I probably have.
Her violet eyes seem shrouded in mystery with shadowy eyeliner that fans out from her eyes in soft, delicate strokes. Piercings that resemble fangs decorate her lower lip with a ring in her nose. Her hair is mostly black and short to curl below her ears, but the right side is heavier and longer, falling beyond her jawline. A few curls are white. Most impressive are the white horns growing from her head, their ends curving to the sky.
She’s shorter than me but gives every impression of the ‘though she be but little, she is fierce’. Especially when she’s dressed in a form-fitting black jumpsuit that emphasizes hertiny figure with her sharp angles…and a strong whip of a black tail.
