Page 62 of Tangled at the Root
Rosemary’s chest is rising and falling just as quickly. “Every single step I’ve taken toward you, I’ve taken on purpose.” Her eyes are glistening. “Don’t tell me it isn’t the same for you.”
“It is,” I whisper raggedly. “It is. Fuck, Rosemary.”
We fall into each other, kissing long and hard, only pulling apart to gasp in air into our deprived lungs.
“Come and help me,” she says when we’ve somewhat caught our breaths, her hand wrapping around my wrist. “I don’t know why the flowers keep growing. I don’t know what this is, how to get rid of it.”
“They’re called orereowe. They’re supposed to keep her in a coma. But I don’t think they’re supposed to go into her heart.”
You’ve poisoned her!My grandmother had screamed, when the oerhwu had shoved the root into her chest.
The flowers had specifically been planted along her arms and legs, not at the source of her blood, the plant’s true nourishment. In her heart, endlessly healing, they had rooted permanently and would grow forever.
“Then we cut out her heart and let her grow a new one.”
I shake my head. “My grandmother had tried.” It had been the first thing she’d attempted in my mother’s shannko’s memories, but the heart had grown back with the plants already embedded, like the orereowe is a part of her now.
I can’t help but wonder at the specific nature of both the orereowe and sisireowe, how much time, effort, and research it must’ve taken for my ancestors to procure them, all to keep theirsacrifice permanently immobilised, her heart optimised for their selfish use.
I tug at Rosemary’s hand, still wrapped around my wrist. “Maybe we should—”
On the other side of the room, my grandmother’s shannko appears.
I grab Rosemary and yank her behind me.
The shannko is now a shannde, horridly twisted out of shape. It’s limbs are swollen with rictus, torso twisted sideways and spine terribly arched, its skin sagging and pallid, eyes big, empty, and completely black. When it opens its mouth, its full of jagged, serrated teeth.
Rosemary gasps and flinches.
I spin around to find her yanking out an orereowe flower that had somehow managed to embed itself into her arm. Blood spills from the open wound.
More of the flowers rise from the ground, lifted by ghostly tentacles.
“Mama, stop!” I scream, tugging wildly at the flowers as those tentacles bury them brutally into my lover, and they immediately start to take root.
Rosemary’s already losing consciousness. I grab her around the waist as she sinks, her eyelids fluttering madly, struggling to stay awake.
“I’m doing this for your own good.” Mama has shifted into the mortal form I remember, though her body is greyscale, and almost completely translucent. “I brought her to you! Practically served her up as the perfect gift. Is this the thanks I get? I’m doing this for the survival of our kind!”
“You’redead, Mama! You need to stop! You need to move on!”
She suddenly grabs her head and screams, like her skull is threatening to break apart. I turn away from her, frantically yanking the plants out of Rosemary’s flesh, fury rising atthe sight of the bloody, dripping wounds, even as they heal themselves shut.
I’d promised no one would hurt her again, yet here I am, reminded that, at the end of the day, I’m only human.
But I’mnothuman.
I stand and turn around, letting instincts as familiar as an old glove take over. My grandmother’s ghostly form has grown a second head. Both heads are wailing, clawing at the other’s face, the body flickering and jerking. In them I can see Mama. I can see my mother.
Behind me, Rosemary stirs.
I begin to shift. My clothes rip as I change into my most basic form—thelegbaju’soriginal form.
Just like I’d known what to do when I’d first eaten Rosemary’s heart, I instinctively know what to do now. Funny how my mother had never taught me what it means to be a legbaju, despite her insistence on acceptance being her goal. And my grandmother, despite her own goal of preservation, had failed to do the same.
I lope across the room, reaching both hands out to curl around the two necks extending from the jerking body, now back to its twisted, mangled form.
I look to the left, at my mother’s ghostly head. For once, her expression is lively, twisted with regret and anguish. She opens her mouth, but only a wail escapes. My grandmother’s face is contorted with grief and pain and rage, her eyeballs nearly bulging right out of her skull.
