What the Dark Remembers

The taste comes before the wind.

Iron. Deep in the mouth. I swallow, and more gathers beneath my tongue.

Nothing bleeds.

Under the leaves, water moves through the earth. Farther off, something works at a husk. I rest until the hollow draws tight, then press into the wet ground. The ache loosens. It closes higher up.

Cold water sometimes carries it lower. I drink from the leaves, but my mouth keeps filling.

Above me, branches rub. I pass beneath them.

The ground rises around a fallen trunk. Rain collects inside the split. I know its sourness before I reach it. Beyond it, roots spread beneath a narrow track. Water runs somewhere below.

I move where the leaves are deepest. Their wet undersides fold without breaking.

Then the wind changes.

Salt.

I draw the air. Old woodsmoke. The sharp wet smell that comes when a living thing is afraid. My mouth fills.

Beneath them there is something else.

I hold the air inside me. The ache loosens so suddenly that I go still. I lean into the wind and draw again.

Still there.

A foot strikes the track. The sound passes through the roots. Weight. A brief dragging. Another step, too close to the first. I turn towards it, and the wind turns with me.

Wet bark. Standing water.

I move to the split trunk and draw air until my mouth is dry. Beyond the trunk, the ground is thick with broken twigs. I press forward. One bends beneath my weight.

I stop.

The steps go on without me.

The hollow pulls so hard that I lean against the wood. Water runs from the split and touches my mouth. For an instant, the iron thins.

I listen for the next footfall.

It comes faintly.

Then salt returns, and I leave the trunk.

One step lands heavily. The next scarcely touches. Something catches a branch and draws it back. Leaves shake after the weight is gone.

I follow beside the track, moving when a foot comes down. A root takes the weight and sends it through the earth. I cross the dip beneath it. Cloth pulls against thorns. Before it tears free, I am closer.

The breathing reaches me. Air dragged through an open mouth. Held. Let out in little broken sounds.

I stop when it stops.

Through the ground comes a faint, quick beating. I lower myself and feel the pauses between its blows. The breath comes again, and I move through the sound of it. Sweat cools in cloth. Mud lifts from the track.

There is blood.

Scarcely anything. Skin opened against bark or stone.

I swallow too loudly.

The breathing stops.

I hold still. Water runs below us. A drop falls from a leaf. The heart strikes harder.

I wait for the foot to lift. For weight to press the earth. For the first blind movement away.

Another drop falls.

The breath breaks loose. The feet begin again.

I follow so close now that each step lifts the scent towards me, the blood faint beneath the sweat but already in my mouth, and I feel the resistance before skin gives, the sudden heat, the movement continuing underneath my weight.

Then I hear the other heart.

Smaller.

So quick that at first it is only a trembling beneath the larger beat, and I wait through the drag of a foot in mud, and there it is, and my mouth floods, and I swallow once, twice, and it keeps coming. The two beats pass through one another. I follow the smaller until I lose it, find it under a breath, lose it again, and I need to come nearer, and a stone rolls under a foot, and weight strikes a tree, and I cross the track while the stone is still rolling, bark scrapes, a small sound catches in the breathing, and I move through that too.

Now there is only the tree between us.

Cloth shifts against it. The trembling travels through the wood and down into the roots. I feel it under me.

My jaw opens a little on its own. The iron thickens.

I need to see how far.

I look.

A little light lies between the branches. Beneath it, a shoulder shakes against the trunk. One arm is held tight across the chest. The other hand picks at the cloth around the opposite wrist.

The cloth is torn.

Fingers pull it down. It catches above the hand. They pull again, trying to cover the place that bleeds.

It slips back.

The fingers go after it.

I ease around the tree, and the hands stop working. The head turns towards the track. Breath is held, released through the nose, held again. One foot moves a little in the mud.

I stop.

The arm presses harder against the chest. The smaller beat disappears beneath the sound of a breath drawn through teeth.

I wait for it.

The fingers find the torn edge. Pull it down.

There. Under the breath.

I come nearer.

The next breath touches my mouth.

Cold.

The beating is everywhere now. In the tree. Through the ground. Inside the hollow. I follow the smaller heart, but another blow comes through it, and another, and I press closer to hear where one ends.

The shoulder shakes. I settle low. The ground takes my weight. A root presses beneath me, and beyond it nothing rises between us. The hands are close to the throat. They will lift when I move. I can feel how little they will hold.

The trembling stops.

The fingers loosen on the cloth.

Slowly, the head turns.

Away from the track.

Towards me.

I am below the light.

The head keeps turning.

It stops.

The heart strikes faster. The smaller beat runs beneath it. The body is still.

The mouth opens.

“Again.”

Quietly.

Close enough for the word to touch me.

My tongue lifts to answer.

It finds the place for the first sound.

My weight is gathered against the root. The mouth before me stays open. The iron comes so thickly that I cannot swallow it.

A hand lifts from the torn sleeve.

I feel the next breath drawing in.

There is time to cross the space before it comes out.

From the Workroom: The Mouth That Almost Answers — on the sentence removed, the rhythm of the pursuit, and the histories the ending leaves open. For paid subscribers.

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This story forms part of Lantern Tales. A new public Lantern is published in full on lucasvarro.com every Thursday, with a new tale for paid subscribers on Substack every Saturday.