Page 57 of Tangled at the Root
And I’d looked, trying not to be afraid, while getting the sense that if she’d been able to move, she would have spat on me.
Pretty paving stones surround the gazebo, while everything else is tamed grass. It’s elevated a few feet off the ground, with five steps leading onto it on either side.
My mother stops in front of one of the pair of stairs, then shifts. My eyes nearly bulge out of my head, I can’t help it.
She doesn’t look at me as her muscles grow nearly three times their size, her spine cracking until it’s a deformed curve.
I remember when she’d snuck into my room when I was eleven and stabbed me. Then again, when my body had helplessly shifted into something animal in defence. Again and again until her two lessons were imparted:stay alert; never let anyone sneak up on youandnever, ever lose control of yourself.
Madness, I’d thought it was, blindly pushing aside the evidence of my inhumanity. Of mymother’sinhumanity.
And with my memories stolen from me, I’dbelievedit was just that.
Now, I know it’s something else entirely.
I’m too old to feel any betrayal as Mummy uses her enhanced supernatural strength to shove away the steps, revealing the familiar hidden stairway underneath.
“Quick.” She darts down, me at her heels.
It seems to go on forever, our eyes adjusting to the darkness. I don’t know how long this stairwell has existed, but the walls—bare concrete blocks—are covered in earth and greenery, in tiny roots crawling with worms and bugs.
The room at the bottom is small. Wires run across the naked walls, lighting a small chandelier sitting overhead in the middle. The woman herself rests on a slab, slightly tilted at a forty-five degree angle, so she’s not quite lying down but not quite standing, either.
The flowers, like miniscule trees, grow directly from her skin, their heads like tiny puffs of smoke dotted in a thin layer of black, resembling mould. Some of the puffs are a sickening neon green, making me feel like they would glow in the dark, while the others are neon purple. The branches are thin and winding, like twisted veins. The plants cover her arms and legs, the rest of her body partially hidden underneath a sheer, white gown with slits on the sides going all the way up to her waist.
I remember Mama making Mummy and ten-year-old me clean her up … after—cutting the bloodied white shift from her form, then carefully wiping her down in clean, warm water dotted with herbs and glittering with crystals, until she was spotless, smelling like sage, mint and something sweet. Mama already had a new white slip waiting to replace the old one when we were done.
“Remove all the green flowers,” Mummy says now, making her way to the woman’s left arm.
I obediently go to her right.
The questions burn in my throat, stinging like raw pepper.
Something about being back this room, with this woman, makes my control start to splinter. Mummy is brutally plucking the tiny plants from their roots, so I do the same, swallowing desperately as dark, poisoned blood spills from the wounds.
“Orereowe. It keeps her sedated,” my mother whispers factually, like she’s imparting one of her lessons. “That’s the green flowers. They keep her in a sort of coma. The sisireowe, the purple ones, are a nourishment for her blood and her heart. It makes us feel fuller when we eat. Makes it so we don’t have to feed again for another ten years.”
My hands are shaking. I swallow the questions and accusations back down like vomit.
Something makes me look up.
In the memories of ten-year-old me, her eyes had been open but unseeing, until Mama had plucked some of the green flowers from her arms, then she’d woken up. When Mummy and I had stepped in just now, her eyes had been closed.
They’re wide open, now.
Those eyes flicker to the entrance behind me.
“So, this is your plan.”
Mummy and I spin around.
Next to my grandmother, my mother’s shift had been child’s play. I hear a sharp crack, then I’m slammed against the wall, held there at the throat by a tight, unrelenting hand.
When I open my eyes, my grandmother hasn’t moved. Her arms have grown; they’re longer and thinner and with extra joints, lightly furred like a spider’s. She maintains a human-like palm, thinner and with longer fingers, and claws that have dug into the earth, pinning both my mother and I in place. The top half of her face is covered in multiple beady, black eyes—exactly like a spider’s, though she retains her human mouth and the rest of her human form.
It’s a ghastly sight. A thing from nightmares. I can’t look away, horrified and hypnotised.
Mummy’s form is morphing rapidly, fingers turning to different sorts of claws, then tipping with poison, trying to rip my grandmother’s hand off her throat. The thin, hairy fleshreplaces itself just as fast as its torn. The bone refuses to budge, refuses to even crack. My mother tries to shrink, but the hand shrinks with her. She tries to grow bigger, and Mama accommodates for the added size. She waits with a silently amused patience until my mother stops fighting, panting, helpless.
