Chapter 1 - The Entwined Children

I. Before:

Sometimes the world is just too quiet

just too loud

just too fearful.

There are wolves in the woods

and a witch on the throne

and the forest knows all of my names.

II.

My grandmother's house was made of red brick, lost in a cul-de-sac of other red brick houses. Her home was older, slightly crumbling, beautiful when painted in sunset gold..

III.

The trees are on fire,

the trees are on fire–

the birds are screaming,

the trees are on fire–

IV.

On the evening of my fifteenth birthday, I took my father's horse, a barely broken paint who still yearned for hills at midnight. The path wound through a wild wood, uninhabited except for the witch and her wolves, but I was not afraid, for I knew the road as if I had carved it out myself.

Nightfall came early to the forest, lingering on the edge of the world's twilight. My father's paint grunted nervously, haunches twitching beneath my thighs as if he might buck me off.

"Come now." I whispered, stroking his tight neck. Without him, I had no hope of reaching the safety of my grandmother's garden. "We are nearly halfway."

We reached the Half-Distance Oak, marked with its crimson flag, and then the Third-Quarter Oak. I could see the light of the setting sun shimmering just beyond the farthest trees.

But the witch's song wormed into my ears, rearranging the words until sense came not my mouth from–

V.

I am a mistake,

daughter and son and none at all

left to rot where no one watches.

I steal those beats,

the way a young heart pulses

with brazen calm–

I make her mine, make her mine,

mine I make.