Page 52 of Tangled at the Root
At first, I feel my mind is playing tricks on me when the ground begins to brighten. It isn’t; I can see the bottom, lit orange like there’s a lamp or a fire blazing below. Renewed energy speeds up my efforts.
The roots coalesce into a single, thick shoot in the middle of the ground.
I drop down with a grunt.
Then I look up, and let out a startled cry.
In the shape of the roots is a woman.
Genevieve.
No, not Genevieve. It just looks a lot like her.
The roots seem to be growingfromthe woman. They’ve blended seamlessly with her skin, bursting from her head, her face, her throat and arms and chest and legs. Said legs are tightly closed. From her knees down, they form one single trunk with a pointed tip hanging off about an inch from the ground.
The tree is her. All those roots are comingfromher.
Her eyes open, and immediately, Iknowher.
I take a stumbling step backward. I know this is a dream, the supposed message from my ancestors, but for a second, I wonder if its a nightmare instead.
But, as is the strange understanding that comes with some dreams, in here, I know the truth.
She’s the oerhwu. The one from my mother’s story. The first and only other native practitioner born with my gift.
“Edémi,” she speaks, her voice an old, familiar thing, the sound vibrating in my bones.
I jolt. Edémi.My daughter.
“I-I—I’m not—” I start to deny, but stop because it’s a lie. I may not literally be her daughter, but I know her. I know this eshé.
She’s an ancestor.Myancestor. My knees tremble at the weight of that knowledge, both with awe and fear and wonder and a desperate need for kinship. She’s the only other person with my gift.Ever.
When she speaks again, she does so in Ibiiom. “You need to leave this place.” When she says “this place”, I’m given a vision of Genevieve’s grandmother’s house. My pulse jolts again. “You were lured here, my daughter, tricked by that despicable legbaju—”
“What? No,” I automatically interrupt in Ibiiom, forgetting my manners and respect, and immediately dipping my head when she eyes me with fury and reprimand. “Genevieve is—she’s not the one who brought me here. She’s not the one keeping me trapped.”
“Is she not?” My ancestor sounds disgusted. “You mean to tell me, that after I’ve suddenly become useless to her, a replacement just magically wound up in her lap?”
My head begins to throb. My tongue feels too thick for my mouth.
“What do you—what do you mean by that?” I force myself to meet her eyes. They’re the dark brown of bark, all her features crudely carved and in the same shade and material of the roots; a wooden idol lost to time.
“I’ve been trapped here so long time has grown meaningless,” she says, her voice somehow simultaneously filled with rage as it is emptiness. “Used as livestock—an endlessly replenishing source of food for that filthy creature desperate to cling to its despicable human form, pretending it’s anything but amonster—”
“No,” I interrupt again. I’m finding it difficult to breathe. “Genevieve isn’t—Genevieve wouldn’t—”
“It kept me trapped here. Feeding on my heart every ten years—thanking me for my “sacrifice”, like I’d had a choice, somehowmanaging to trick itself into thinking it was something else, but always, always coming back to tear me open once the truth of its nature inevitably rose again.” Oh God. Oh God. “I render my heart practically useless, and somehow, it immediately, magically finds … you.”
“No.” I swallow. I’m shaking. “Genevieve wouldn’t—” I swallow again. My throat is so dry it hurts. “You have to be referring to her grandmother. Or her mother. I know Genevieve. She would never—”
“It’s nothuman!”my ancestor screams, like she wants to brand the words onto my skin with a smouldering poker. “Your worst mistake is forgetting that. It’s going to bind you like its ancestors bound me.Generationsof them fed from me.It—the one you call “Genevieve”—has fed twice already from me. They’ve spent so long clinging to their human forms they’ve ironically forgotten their roots. But nature always brings them back.”
My ancestor’s voice quiets, now a deadly whisper. “It’s going to make you believe it’s your choice. It’s going to make you believe you’re making a noble sacrifice for the greater good, for the better of humanity. It’s so lifelike, isn’t it? Giving you sweet words? Making you feel worshipped?” I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. “The moment you let your guard down, you’ve already lost.”
She gives her final warning in English. “Heed my message, my daughter. Leave this place, or seal your fate.”
I wake up chilled to the bone.
