Page 108 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

me from behind, passing the giant blade through the thing’s
neck. Its head dropping cleanly to the ground.
Wisely determining her beasts insufficient to her cause,
the woman fled, her nimble retreat soundless. The last two
monsters tried to cover her withdrawal, rearing up in front of
me in a show of intimidation. My sister slashed their throats
in a wide, sweeping arc before taking flight and plunging
into the fleeing woman’s back. She stumbled into the low-
hanging limbs of a dead tree, just beyond the wood line. She
tried desperately to hold herself up by the lifeless branches,
even as they tangled within her hair and poked at her flesh.
With a handful of broken twigs, she slowly collapsed to the
ground.
I wanted badly to spare the remaining creatures, but I
couldn’t. Miss Patience already knew too much. They came
at me almost passively, their fires cold and dead. With their
task all but impossible, they simply wanted an end to things.
It was a gentle affair, considering.
The woman was still breathing, as I’d intended. I looked
upon her face—she was blind and terribly beautiful, her
eyes a marriage of glass and spring rain. I immediately
recognized her from my dream. “More like an eagle than
a thoughtless bird,” I said. “An eagle fears nothing, and it
finds no critics among the littered bones of its prey.” I had
wanted to glean further insights from her, but I’d destroyed
too much beauty to summon any lingering sense of purpose.
I couldn’t bear to look at her. As I turned away, I could hear
the rain falling behind her beautiful, sightless eyes.
She gathered what breath remained and spoke. “I didn’t
know . . . eagles could cry.” In the next moment, the blind
woman and the sun were dead. The newborn darkness
drifted across me, washing the remains of the daylight from
my broken skin. I sank into the darkened field, defeated.
I had become a cannibal, subsisting on the flesh of
dreamers and leaving their corpses to bake beneath the
horrible sun. There was little rationalization left to me—I
The Red Son | 111