THE KING OF STONES

SIMON STRANTZAS

Judith regretted letting Rose talk her into the car trip. It was a huge mistake; she knew as soon as she agreed to it, but there was no snatching the words back. Not without causing a rift between them.

So she swallowed her regret and assured herself it would be fine. How wrong could it go? Two days later she knew, silently fuming behind the wheel, stuck in a line of traffic with no visible end. And there were still four more days of vacation left ahead of them.

The worst part was Rose appeared unfazed. She sat in the passenger seat, feet on the dashboard so Judith couldn’t help but be confronted by those gnarled, twisted toes as she looked through the windshield. Rose whistled and hummed as though the two of them were strolling through a park. As though it were a bright, lazy Sunday morning at home, and there were no troubles anywhere in the world.

Judith wanted to hit something. Instead, she sighed deeply.

Rose looked up from under her sun hat.

“Don’t let it stress you out, love. This is part of the adventure. Just try to relax.”

Judith took another deep breath. Held it. But was overwhelmed by how much longer they’d be stuck.

“Screw this,” she said. “I’m getting off the highway.”

“But we’re in the middle of traffic. How—”

“Just watch me.”

She signaled, more out of habit than courtesy, and forced her way to the furthest lane amid a chorus of honks and curses. There, she took the car onto the shoulder and put the pedal down. Rose pressed herself flat in terror while Judith navigated the slalom between concrete walls and other cars, inches of leeway on either side. If Rose said something, Judith couldn’t hear it. Not within her haze of anger. And it wasn’t until they reached the exit and left the traffic snarl behind that either of them could relax enough to speak.

“That was . . . dangerous.”

“It all worked out. Nobody was hurt.”

Rose’s calm was slow to return.

“Do you even know where we are?”

Judith didn’t. She hadn’t made note of the exit, nor did she see any street signs that might help them find the exit on a map. But she had a quick plan.

“All we need to do is drive around the traffic. If we follow the highway using side streets and roads, eventually we’ll get to a place where whatever caused the tangle is gone, and we can get back on. Meanwhile, we get to see some more small towns and scenery. And should we end up loving a place, we’ll just stay over for a night. That’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it? To explore?”

“Yes,” Rose hedged. “Though I was hoping we’d reach Murtaugh before we stopped. This will put us behind schedule.” She took a moment to ponder the idea. “Ah, who cares? Let’s just go and see what happens!”

How had they ended up together? Judith was still amazed. They experienced the world so differently. Rose with her hippie skirts and positive thinking, Judith in her black Slits T-shirt and blurry tattoos; they didn’t look like they lived in the same universe, let alone knew each other. And yet when her ex-girlfriend Kim introduced them at a Bikini Kill show twenty years ago—back when Judith was writing music reviews for Idaho’s second-most popular alt newspaper, and Rose was irregularly publishing her photocopied zine—Judith was blinded by a light that pierced right through her darkness. Even if she didn’t always appreciate Rose, part of her knew how much she needed her. It was impossible to put into words how much.

They drove along wooded streets and past untended fields, trying to keep the highway in view as regularly as possible. When it looked to be going north, they drove north. When it appeared to veer west, they too veered west. Sometimes they saw it snake through the woods for a stretch of a few miles—always backed up with red lights—sometimes not for a long while. And eventually they stopped seeing it altogether.

“Maybe the road curved without us realizing it?”

“It’s okay, love,” Rose said in that supportive voice that made Judith feel like an infant. “Should we stop and ask somebody for directions?”

“Who are we going to ask?”

Rose was optimistic they’d find someone, but Judith knew they hadn’t seen a single person since exiting the highway. At first it was satisfying: to not be caught in the grinding traffic, driving freely without anyone in the way, made Judith feel liberated. Even stoplights seemed foreign. But after a time it grew uncomfortable. Nobody walked along the side of the road. No one passed them, driving in the opposite direction. Nobody at all.

Even stranger, there were no houses along the streets. No postboxes or signs. There was the road and there was nothing else, not even a place to refuel if needed.

It wasn’t until half an hour passed that they saw proof they weren’t alone. Rose was the one who spotted it because of course she was. She grew immediately excited, dancing in her seat, and urged Judith to pull over without explaining why. Judith did so, but only because the aimless driving was starting to affect her mood for the worse. Getting out of the car, if only for a moment to stretch her legs, might fill Judith’s reserves for another hour.

But Rose had seen more. As soon as the car stopped, she leaped out and jogged to the edge of the road, beyond which the ground gently sloped away. She stood there, yellow sundress rippling in the breeze, and put her hand to the brim of her enormous hat.

“I knew it,” she said, pointing into the distance. “Those are peach trees!”

They left the car behind as they walked downslope toward the orchard. There were almost two dozen trees, arranged in three rows, surrounded by thinning woods. Rose had grabbed her camera from the trunk, so Judith did her best to tolerate the occasional pauses for photographs of drifting pink blossoms and petals. The day was nearing its warmest and brightest, and Judith was starting to burn beneath her black T-shirt. She regretted not bringing a better pair of shoes for walking through grass and dirt as she’d expected to spend most of the trip on sidewalks and pavement. Her military boots were too cumbersome, and the extra weight she’d put on since she and Rose had met wasn’t helping. Besides, if Rose could handle the trek in a pair of open-toed sandals, then surely she could.

When they reached the peach trees, Rose laughed effervescently, and held out her hands as though the petals were snowflakes. All Judith noticed were the fallen peaches littering the ground. Every footstep was precariously close to rot, and she wondered if that was supposed to mean something more than it did.

At the far end of the plot, they made an unexpected discovery. Hidden from the road was one more peach tree. It had been felled at some point in the past, though it wasn’t clear by what. It was much larger than the others, yet they remained upright while it lay on its side, not just toppled but uprooted as well.

“This thing is huge,” Rose said. “I can’t even tell how tall it was.”

She paused, taking the sight in, before excitedly adding, “Get a photo of me with it!”

Judith accepted the camera begrudgingly. Waved her onward.

“I guess go to the uprooted end. It will probably be more interesting.”

“But you won’t see how tall the tree is.” Rose said, pouting from beneath her wide brim.

Judith choked down her disinterest.

“Maybe, but you’ll see how thick it is. You can count the rings. Isn’t that almost as good?”

For Rose, it was.

They took measured steps around the fallen tree, careful to avoid the crown’s dried branches that jutted like spears toward them. Judith reached for the massive trunk for balance and was repulsed; it was like putting her hand on a decaying wet sponge. When the two of them reached the foot of the tree, the sight was astonishing. The roots pulled from the ground were splayed like dozens of fingers, twisted and woven into gnarled knots and patterns. Untold years of weather had stripped away any loose dirt, leaving plenty of room for the spiders and insects to build permanent homes.

“What is that?” Rose asked. Judith peered around the tangled roots.

It was a small cast-iron pot, worn and weathered, sitting knee-high on a slice of tree stump. Around it the ground had been trodden down to the dirt, and there were two larger indentations that couldn’t have been footprints. Judith thought they might have been made by someone’s knees.

The pot appeared to be filled with black peach stones, each wrinkled and hard. Judith imagined whoever harvested the peaches would eat one on occasion, but it was baffling why they would bother saving the stones.

“Whoa . . .” Rose said, staring into the fallen tree’s roots.

Judith turned, and was equally dumbstruck.

The roots had clearly grown randomly and naturally, but nevertheless they’d miraculously woven into an illusion that could be seen only when standing directly in front of the pot. The way they bent and twisted created the illusion of a man seated with eyes closed, his beard twisted into tendrils. The image was rough and gnarled, but there was no mistaking what it was. Judith stepped closer to better examine how the trick worked, but as she did the figure returned to being a shapeless collection of roots. A step back allowed the illusion to regain its shape.

“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” Rose said. Even Judith had to agree. “Take the photo so I can show everybody when we get home. No one’s going to believe it!”

She bounded in front of the trunk, then straightened her sundress and adjusted her hat so her face found the light.

Rose’s hair caught the sun and wouldn’t let it go; a corona enveloping her like a halo. Judith was breathless when she saw it—a deep and sudden remembrance of how much she truly loved her. Despite the irritations and minor disagreements, she was lucky to be with her. Judith was so overwhelmed she nearly forgot to raise the camera, and when she did the lens captured the waves emanating from Rose like something by Vermeer. What the camera didn’t capture, however, was the illusion of the rooted man. Even when Judith knelt down beside the pot, or tried different angles, the results were the same. The camera saw Rose, but could not see him.

“Photos flatten everything,” Rose eventually said, as though the words were meant to comfort Judith, not mollify her. But it didn’t help; Judith’s inability to capture the illusion was too frustrating. “It’s probably better this way. More special. You and I will remember this moment even if we don’t have any pictures.”

“I’m sure we will,” she said, deciding she no longer cared. “We should probably go now. Find the highway before we lose more of the day.”

“Okay,” Rose said. “Just let me do one thing.”

While Judith waited, Rose kicked at the rotten peaches in the dirt, looking through their scattered remains. When she found a suitably dark stone, she picked it up and rubbed it between her hands to flay any remaining flesh, then walked to the pot, knelt down in the worn spots, and laced her fingers together as if in prayer, the stone between her palms. She whispered something into her hands before dropping the stone into the pot. She then stood and let her dress fall back to her feet.

“For luck,” she said.

Judith rolled her eyes.

The return journey to the car was worse because they walked uphill into the sun. Rose still had boundless energy, taking more photographs of the peach trees and their blossoms, while Judith trudged behind wishing they’d never left the house. She couldn’t help but wonder where they’d be now if they hadn’t taken that off-ramp. Probably already in Murtaugh, sipping a drink on a patio.

“Hey, someone else has pulled over,” Rose said, and Judith looked up to see a small truck parked next to theirs. It was old, a pale shade of blue, and two silhouetted people stood on the edge of the road looking out over it. Judith couldn’t get a clear look at the pair with the sun at their backs, but she suspected they were an older couple by the shape of their shadows.

“I bet they saw the peach trees and stopped, too,” Rose said. “Those blossoms really are beautiful. Where do you think they’re headed?”

“Does it matter?” Judith said. “It’s not like we’re going to see them again anyway.”

Rose stopped. Slumped her shoulders, and turned to face Judith. The look on her face was unexpectedly halting.

“Why do you have to be like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . like you are. Always so negative about everything. Don’t you care about me?”

“What? Of course I do.”

“It affects me, you know. I try to not let it. I try to be cheerful for the both of us. I try to keep us happy. But you make it so hard sometimes. It’s like you’re trying to ruin things. I feel like . . . like . . . like you’re emitting bad vibes or something. All this negative energy radiating from you that I constantly absorb, and I don’t know how much longer I can do it. Do you get what I’m saying? I don’t know how much more I can take on.”

Judith didn’t know what to say. The shock of Rose’s confession was disorienting, and her first instinct was to question what she’d done wrong. But she hadn’t done anything. She wasn’t at fault.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not being negative. I’m just being me. This is who I’ve always been. You used to tell me you liked that about me. That I wasn’t fake.”

“It’s not about being real or fake. It’s about not treating me like your emotional punching bag.”

“I really think you’re blowing this out of proportion.”

That was too much. Rose sputtered, threw up her hands, and stormed off toward the car. Judith felt irritated; the couple on the road probably saw the whole exchange and was judging them.

She let Rose get a minute or two ahead before following. A short break would help, she thought. Let Rose cool off and regain some perspective. When Rose got nearer the car, Judith watched her wave at the couple who were standing there, though Judith wasn’t sure if they returned the gesture.

Judith woke in the dark, not sure where she was. Opening her eyes made her head hurt, an ache that spread from the base of her neck forward, and when she tried to reach up to feel what happened she discovered she couldn’t; her hands had been bound. But that made no sense. And why was it so hard to think?

Her last memory was of sweating through her shirt by the time she reached the road. Rose had been speaking to the strange couple, two women somewhere in their forties or fifties, dressed in ill-fitting clothes and looking slumped and miserable. She babbled, not giving them the chance to talk, while Judith continued to the car, having no interest in meeting strangers, not when she was already upset. Why had they chosen to crowd her and Rose instead of driving an extra few minutes up the road? The orchard had to be visible from elsewhere. Or if not, there was likely another. Orchards aren’t planted in isolation. Judith had popped open the trunk and forcefully pushed aside Rose’s bags to get to her own. There was another shirt in there, an extra she brought in case of emergency. The last thing she remembered was turning her back on Rose and the nameless couple to find it.

Where was she? Indoors, in a room that was dark, but not without some light coming through a window. Each blink was painful, but she forced herself to ignore it. Judging by the color of light, it had to be late afternoon, which meant she’d lost a few hours. She tried again to pull her arms free, but they were tied behind her back. Maybe with coarse rope, like something used on a farm. The air had that kind of smell, too. Earthy, mixed with dust and manure. And peaches. She smelled peaches. The chair she was seated on was hardbacked, and in the gloom she made out shelves around her. On the other side of the room was a steel sink beside a stack of crates. It was some sort of storage room.

Where was Rose?

If they hurt Rose . . .

She couldn’t let herself think about it. Focus on the immediate. Her hands were tied, but her legs weren’t. Could she somehow stand? Maybe get to a shelf and find something to cut herself free? She tried kicking out but the chair wouldn’t budge. She tried planting her feet on the floor and leaning, but the ropes were too tight; she couldn’t get enough leverage. Fits of struggling didn’t loosen anything. They just tired her out.

The door opened before she could do more. Two middle-aged women walked in, stooped with dark scarves wrapped around their heads. Judith couldn’t tell if they were the women from the road. She couldn’t remember what those women looked like.

“Where am I? What’s going on? Where’s Rose?”

Her own voice was so loud it made her head throb. But the women didn’t respond. The one with a lower lip that extended in a permanent pout filled a bucket in the sink while the other, round-faced with gray wisps of hair protruding from under her scarf, took hold of Judith’s face and inspected it from different angles. Judith considered trying to bite the woman, or just spit at her, but with her hands tied Judith feared how vulnerable she was.

Once satisfied, the woman shuffled back to the door and opened it for a third woman to enter. This one was stern and lean, her hair tied up and as close to silver as Judith had ever seen. The new woman approached Judith and said nothing. Instead, she bent close, nostrils flared, and inhaled deeply. She ran her finger along the side of Judith’s face and scowled. Shook her head. Stood up. The round-faced woman reappeared, accompanied by the pouting woman who was carrying the bucket. The silver-haired woman pointed at Judith, then left the room.

“Please, tell me what’s going on,” Judith implored, but there was no suggestion of understanding. Rather than answer her, the pouting woman set down the bucket and lifted out a sopping rag. She twisted out the water. The round-faced woman’s arms dropped on Judith’s shoulders, pinning her down. Judith screamed, but they disregarded her as they scrubbed her clean.

They led her outside, still bound by coarse ropes. The sun had already ducked behind the horizon, but there was still enough light for Judith to see where she was. A small village formed by no more than a dozen hand- built ramshackle houses. The inhabitants of those houses stood in their mismatched clothes, witnessing Judith’s march into the oncoming night. The pair of haggard women had cleaned her and removed her T-shirt, her jeans and boots, dressing her instead in a long yellowed gown that felt gritty against her bare skin. They did not give her shoes.

She didn’t know where they were taking her. No one would answer her pleas. The realization that she’d been trapped and would not survive didn’t elude her, but she struggled to keep from thinking about it. That ended, however, once she was in open air, being stared at by dozens of scrutinizing eyes. The fear took hold faster than she could contain it.

“Rose!” she screamed. “Where are you, Rose? Rose!”

The villagers looked at one another, aghast. But Judith couldn’t stop screaming. It went on and on and did not stop until her pouting captor struck her hard across the face. Judith shut up immediately from shock. The woman appeared shaken, too, unsteady, while her partner stared with wide eyes. The rest of the villagers looked shocked as well, some of them mouthing their confusion. Some of those looks then shifted toward anger.

The grunts and chirps from the villagers drowned out Judith’s cries. They ran toward her, a wave of unwashed people dressed in patched clothes, and she struggled to escape. But when the villagers descended, it wasn’t on her but on the pouting woman.

The woman didn’t try to run or protect herself. She stood stoically as they arrived, unmoved by fear or regret. When their punches and kicks landed, she said nothing. There was no sound except of meat pounded and bones broken. The villagers tore at the woman in silence while Judith, unable to watch without wanting to scream, was led away by the round-faced woman and another, taller, woman with graying black hair and pinched eyes.

Behind Judith the bloodthirsty attack did not slow or stop. When they loaded her into a rusty and puttering truck filled with crates of peaches, she could not bring herself to look back. If that was what happened to one of their own, what might happen to her? To Rose? It was too painful to contemplate.

No one spoke to her in the truck. No one answered her questions. She struggled against the hands that pinned down her arms, but couldn’t shake them free. And if she could, so what? There would be nothing she could do. Nowhere she could go. She had no option but to sit there and tolerate the stench of sickeningly sweet peaches while she conserved her strength in hopes an opportunity would present itself. Were she younger, were it the days before she met Rose, when she attended rallies and raved at shows, the anger and aggression would have carried her through. When she was all wired muscle and attitude. But she’d grown older, less interested in changing the world, and become too soft and weak, too unobservant. And because of that, she’d lost both herself and Rose.

The truck pulled over to the side of the road. The sky was an impenetrable black, devoid of stars, devoid of light. Judith didn’t even see the reflection of the taillights ahead until she was dragged from the truck. When she did, they looked familiar, but it took a moment to realize why. They belonged to her car. Hers and Rose’s. Its trunk was open.

In the distance a group of torches burned. The round-faced woman and her tall partner yanked Judith again, directing her down the slope and toward the distant flames made smaller still by the vast darkness.

Upturned roots and branches, fallen brambles and pebbles, dug into and scratched her bare feet. This would be her end. She knew it. So much time fighting, so many things done wrong. And for what? To lead her to this moment? She’d carried so much hate and anger for so long, but it amounted to nothing in the end. It made no difference. It made nothing better.

The air stank sour of rotten fruit, and Judith couldn’t keep from stumbling over the uneven ground. But the two women would not be slowed; each time Judith tripped, they lifted her and pushed her forward. Even when she hesitated, even when she fell, scraping her face on something she couldn’t see, they pressed her on toward the flames.

And when she was finally pushed through the penumbrae and into the light, the crowd of villagers was revealed. Some were dressed in gowns similar to hers, both women and men, shoeless, hands together in supplication. Others were dressed as they’d been in the village, in old worn clothes, unwashed and unrepaired. She saw a man with a graying beard wearing a shirt that looked familiar, like one of hers. It had been rolled up in her suitcase, left in the trunk of the car. Judith knew what that meant and wanted to scream.

But didn’t. Instead, she stopped, powerless to speak. The crowd of villagers had parted. And in their parting Rose was revealed, feet torn and bloodied, face bruised and reddened from her own hard scrubbing.

Judith let out a throaty chirp when she tried to call Rose’s name. Yet Rose heard it, and her eyes alighted with hope and love and terror. Judith struggled to run to her but was held in place. The distance between them insurmountable.

Judith lashed out, but couldn’t connect with anyone. The cast-iron pot waited before the fallen tree; the stump she’d seen earlier was gone, replaced by a circle of misshapen bricks and a fire. The pot hung above it from a metal tripod, the stones inside dulled by the heat.

“What do you want?” Judith demanded. “Why are you doing this to us?” And still there was no answer.

But some faces turned to her. Some opened their mouths and made a horrible wet clucking. And Judith understood with horror why the villagers had been so silent. Behind their cracked lips, behind their decaying teeth, their tongues were gone. Cut out. Only stumps of dark flesh that rolled and convulsed in the firelight.

“Judith!” Rose yelled as she struggled to escape. “I love you, Judith,” she said, and began to weep.

“Let her go!” Judith screamed. “Let her go! Oh my god, Rose. I love you! I love you so much! Let her go! Let her go right now!” She fought against the hands holding her. “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you all! Let her the fuck go!”

Judith screamed and screamed, but no one cared.

They dragged Rose forward to the burning pot and forced her to her knees. She sobbed uncontrollably, tears and mucus streaming down her face, her speech unintelligible. Her captors took care to position her in the worn grooves as more villagers approached, grabbing hold of her arms, her legs, her shoulders. She cried out in pain, cried out for help. But Judith couldn’t give it to her, no matter how much she struggled and cursed. The villagers continued, slipping a cracked wooden yoke around Rose’s neck, twisting the oiled bolts tighter until her head couldn’t move. Rose’s tear-strewn face was pointed toward the splayed roots of the fallen tree, and she stared directly at the illusion she and Judith had discovered an impossible few hours earlier.

“What’s going on?” she blubbered, the yoke forcing her jaw shut. “What are you doing?”

“Let her go!” was all Judith could say in her manic state. Over and over again.

The silver-haired woman appeared from the crowd, dressed in a long brown patchwork skirt that just covered her bare feet. Her long tresses had been let down, her eyes glistened, and in her mottled hands she held a long pair of metal tongs. She pointed at Rose with an unsteady hand and the villagers pulled back Rose’s hair, away from her face.

Judith screamed, no longer capable of forming words, becoming a primal force of rage and terror. She felt it embody her, overwhelm her, become her; an enveloping and transforming red mist of pain. With her newfound power she wrenched with all her strength and tore an arm free from her captor. And, before anyone could stop her, she drove her elbow into the tall woman’s face, breaking something, and tried to claw out the shorter woman’s eyes. Villagers appeared suddenly, piling onto her, trapping her arm before it could do further damage. She roared with rage but couldn’t prevent what was happening. Couldn’t prevent herself from being subdued.

All the while, the woman standing over Rose wasn’t distracted. She lifted the heavy tongs and placed them in the cast-iron pot. By the time Judith was immobilized, everyone had stopped to watch the silver-haired woman with reverence. Everyone except Rose, who continued to bottomlessly sob.

The stones shifted and popped until the woman removed the tongs, holding a smoldering black stone in their grip. The villagers uttered a sound in unison—an indescribable low-pitched drone as though they were attempting to sing—and the silver-haired woman placed the burning stone on Rose’s forehead.

Rose’s scream nearly shattered the world.

Judith screamed, too. Anger flowing as she watched the villagers push down on Rose, steadying her so the old woman could add another burning stone, then another. One by one the stones were placed in a circle around Rose’s head while Judith cursed and sobbed impotently. Rose no longer cried, no longer moved as the stones embedded themselves in her melted flesh. Blood streamed down her unconscious face, soaking her gown as Judith continued to rage.

She screamed until she couldn’t hold a breath any longer, screamed until her throat was raw and her limbs were weak. Until she could no longer fight against the villagers bearing down on her. Then, depleted, she collapsed in the grip of her captors. All strength and rage burned away. An empty shell.

But the villagers would not allow her to fall. They held her up, striking the sides of her face until her eyes opened, and made her watch as they lifted the unconscious Rose from where she knelt and brought her to the felled peach tree. They hoisted her into the tangle of roots, her arms spread wide, her legs crossed at the ankle. Blood soaked the top of her gown black.

They pitched Judith forward, dragged her to the cast-iron pot, forced her to kneel. Hanging before her was Rose, caught in the roots of the tree, the mirage of the bearded man behind her. It was too much to bear. Judith wished she could close her eyes, but couldn’t. They were locked on Rose’s drooping face.

The silver-haired woman approached, her arms spattered to the elbow with Rose’s blood, dragging the long tongs behind her. She stood between the pot and the tree and looked at what remained of Judith. She cocked her head, then put her hand on the side of Judith’s face. Judith recoiled, tried to pull away as the vestiges of herself fled. The woman waited until they were gone before stroking Judith’s face.

When she was done, she stood and inserted the tongs again into the burning pot. Judith did not move, but the villagers pinned her down nonetheless. Pinned her as the woman removed another wrinkled black stone. Judith’s body tremored, but she was unaware of it.

And the woman dropped the stone onto the ground.

She held out her hand. A villager rushed to her side and handed her a full waterskin. She uncorked it and spilled the contents over the black stone. It sizzled under the stream, and when it stopped the women bent and fished the stone from the mud. She stood, and without brushing away the dirt and debris, placed it in her mouth.

There was a moment of silence before the first tremor traveled across her body. Then there was a second, forewarning the seizure that quickly followed. The woman made a choking sound, like something being pulled from the muck, and pointed toward Rose’s limp body. Blood poured out of the silver-haired woman’s open mouth and over her chin, followed by the squirm of a shriveled black tongue. It danced across her lips as the woman croaked a single word.

“Watch.”

And Judith watched, too beaten and numb to resist. She watched Rose hanging there, her body limp, her chest heaving with troubled breaths. And as she watched she thought of nothing. Not of why this was happening. Not of the last thing she’d said to Rose. Not of all the times she’d been irritated, impatient, or angry with her. Not of all the times she wished she were somewhere else. She thought of nothing. Nothing but of Rose and how she’d failed her.

Judith wanted to speak, but there were no words.

Suddenly, Rose’s unconscious body jerked. The villagers dropped to their knees. Bowed their heads.

But not Judith. She was transfixed.

Rose jerked again, and every limb went rigid at once. They stretched out from beneath her filthy gown like sticks. Her eyes opened wide. So wide. So very, very wide. As though she were trying to see everything at once.

“Oh my god,” she screamed. “Oh my god!

“I can—all of—oh my god!

“All of the secrets. All of the secrets and the pains. Oh my god, I can feel them. I can see them. Oh my god.

“They’re in me. Under my skin. I’m overflowing. I’m transforming.

“Oh my god. Look at me!

“Look at me now!”

She convulsed, limbs flailing, eyes rolling white. And the roots of the dead tree began to tremble, to creak. To move. They curled toward the hanging Rose, reached across and wrapped around her, one at a time. Over and over, constricting until they enveloped her, pulled her in. Took her and her crown of thorns away from this world.

“The King needs his Queen,” the silver-haired woman croaked as she stood, one tired leg after the other. “And she is a vessel primed.”

The woman bent down and placed something on the ground in front of Judith. Then stood and touched the kneeling woman’s face.

“From their union might sweet fruit spill.”

With that, the woman spit the bloodied stone back into the pot.

Judith knelt in front of the fire and whispered. No one held her down any longer. No one had to. There was nowhere for her to go. With Rose gone there was nothing left. Just Judith and her memories of all she’d done wrong, of all the trouble she’d caused. She knelt where Rose had, a stream of words falling from her underbreath while the villagers stood in a circle, silent and patient.

It was her fault. She’d prepared Rose. Had been preparing her since the moment they met at that show, so many years before. Primed her to suffer, to take on what wasn’t hers, until it bore her out, opened a hole that needed to be filled. Judith had prepared her unknowingly for this moment. To suffer their sins, to carry them away. To be taken below as some ancient payment, some ritualistic bargain. It was Judith’s fault it happened. Judith’s, and Judith’s alone.

The knife the silver-haired woman left lay in front of her. Its handle carved from old wood, its blade curved and thin. It did not gleam in the dying firelight. It did nothing but wait for Judith as she whispered and moaned and tried to expel everything she’d seen, everything she’d done.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t relieve herself of the burden. It weighed down on her, heavier and heavier. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but be crushed by it. She was going to die there, alone amid the peach trees. Alone in the dark of nowhere. And her anger would plant itself like a poisonous seed in the soil. Grow outward. Corrupt everything until there was nothing left to corrupt. Until it was all destroyed.

Unless she unburdened herself.

She rattled off her mistakes, listed her crimes, her sins; spoke each, one after the other, until her tongue carried them all.

Then she snatched up the knife.

The blade was sharp and quick and when she was done she took the writhing length of flesh that bore what she no longer could and dropped it into the black iron pot to cook and shrivel, harden and blacken. Become a stone condensed to pure sorrow. Another piece, another rune, to summon the twin bounties of harvest and forgiveness.

But forgiveness had a price. And sometimes that price demanded forgiveness of its own. Forgiveness no one else could grant. Not the King. Not his courtier. Not even his new Queen, the gift of a village to one so much older, adorned with the purest of crowns. Forgiveness that could only come from within.

Forgiveness like that required an impossible amount of strength.

Strength Judith did not have.

So instead of forgiveness, she gave away the only things she had left to give. Gave away her burdens and her pains. Offered them up to the King as so many had before, and as many would again. The act of letting them go filled her with relief impossible to express.

She no longer had the words.