Journey of a Girl

Ajo: Chapter Twenty-One

Years crawled and flew by.

The creature's mind was a constant fog of muddled feelings and meanings, and when it tried to grasp at them for too long it became uncomfortable, so it accepted those fleeting images of what might be its past as trivial things. Everything important, it decided, was waiting in the future.

In the meantime, it looked for ways to distract itself.

It discovered magic and entertained itself with tricks and mischief. At first the creature was much like a child, concerned only with the bliss of exploration.

But there was always a note of despair within it.

And anger.

Loneliness.

The woman who created it said to wait.

Wait and punish.

When an animal wandered into its path, a dove with a broken wing, the creature caught it and held it close.

"What are you?" the creature asked.

The dove shivered.

"You're afraid of me," the creature noted. "Should I be feared?"

The dove said nothing.

The creature could not decide what to do, so it conjured a cage and locked the animal inside. It tied the cage to one of its exposed ribs, intending to keep its prisoner until a proper course of action became obvious. The black that pumped from the creature's heart splashed across the poor bird, covering it from beak to talon, but its captor did not notice.

More cages joined quickly after. When there was no room left on its ribs, it tied prisoners to its horns. Then its wrists. It wore a few of them around its neck. It became a burden to carry them all, and space on its body was growing scarce. More time was needed to devise a plan for them, so a new place was required to keep them.

And it knew the perfect tree for the task.

The trunk bore ugly scars but its base was beautifully adorned. The air around it was filled with sorrow, and the name of the creature's enemy grew louder in its mind when it drew close.

Only the cries of prisoners would drown it out.

And so, its collection began.

It came upon a fairy village nearby and added its people to the hoard. The glow of a thousand sprites became a beacon to light the creature's way back.

The beings imprisoned were not happy about their fate, but their jailor liked it this way. The pleas and cries made it feel less alone, and the combined agony in the tree gave it great pleasure, to know that others shared its misery. When their anguish swelled to a thunderous roar, the sound became a perfect reflection of the torment inside its soul.

Soon the branches were full and began to dip, so the creature used its magic to grow more, and widened the trunk to hold the massive weight.

But it was never enough.

It came to pass that all the beings in the woods feared it and fled from its path—but none were quick enough to evade its speed.

It drained the color of the tree's bark to leave a startling white, so all would know to whom the collection belonged:

The most powerful beast in the woods.

Sometimes when it hunted, it called to things it could not remember.

"Gretch," it once said without thinking, "are you here?"

When it spoke the name its heart fluttered and pushed ichor from its ribs at a more quickened pace.