In the hearts of dreamers, lament will always linger. Sadness can bloom into the brightest, lambent shades, like the rain giving way to the phantom of a rainbow, like the promise of hope. But sorrow may also wind down a darker, colder path. Our hear...
Hi! Yes, I'm publishing the next chapter of 'SNOW BEES'! I know it's only been a month and a half or so since I submitted it to the magazines, but I just didn't want to leave the story hanging here, so I'm going to continue this slowly. Enjoy!
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Since then, Kodiak had sought sanctuary in her Mama Annistyn. It was not that Inaya and Jantzen had driven her away from the only home she knew, but it was a sort of strange calling, like a mother lioness beckoning to her cub to return to her after having been raised by cheetahs. Dawn dripped through the windows, Inaya and Jantzen awaking to Kodiak's empty bed, the room filled with stuffed animals and blankets and storybooks no one had taken, the nook window shattered open.
Mama Annistyn's heart leapt in horror the second she came home from the market, dropped all her bags, discovering Mitchska's bedroom door ajar, an ancient key twisted inside the keyhole. She patted the key in her pocket – gone.
How?
She scrambled forward, neglecting her fallen groceries, and clutched onto the doorway of her daughter's bedroom. Little Kodiak lay curled against her sleeping mother's stomach. Worried that she would catch whatever Mitchska had, Mama Annistyn tugged Kodiak from the bed. Kodiak refused fervently, lashing out with scratching nails and gnashing teeth at her grandmother whenever Mama Annistyn tried to take her away more forcefully.
"Kodiak!" scolded Mama Annistyn.
The child froze at the name, as though for the moments in between everything, she had forgotten her given name. Kodiak shook her head, and her teeth came sharp and nails honed to a point they were claws.
A flash of bone-white, a scalding pain on her arm, a spittle of blood – and Mama Annistyn stumbled backwards, colliding against the wall. Her injured arm she pressed close to her stomach, whilst Kodiak's gnashing-teeth and scathing-claws retreated, peacefully slumbering on her mother.
For a fleeting second, Mama Annistyn could have sworn Mitchska's lips twitch in a smile.
A smile that chilled the very spirit in her bones.
Mama Annistyn had always known there was something terribly, terribly wrong in this world.
