Mango's Last Dance
The water moved all wrong or rather, it didn’t move. Neil got down on his belly, ignoring the dirt and the sharp pricks from dried pinecones and branches, and crawled closer to the still, wet darkness.
It smelled wintry, a damp, mildewy smell with a hint of something new, something sweet and pungent, but not in a good way. He held his breath then slowly let it out, the sound of it strikingly loud. That, too, was wrong. The silence.
Something muted the singing of the trees and the whispers of the winds. He took a slow, careful look around. Grass shriveling into itself to ward off the approaching cold, the tree branches already shorn of their burdens, dark, slender limbs hanging limply from their bodies, as if they no longer had the strength to reach for the small circle of the sun as it warmed its way up from its nocturnal hideaway.
The sun was a shiny smile on Mango’s face when he’d let her win at stones. He caught himself smiling, thinking of her as she was before. Sparkles in her eyes, the bright ribbons around her neck and wrists, always a different color, the threads frayed, free-flowing in the breeze, dancing. Shrill-laughing, fast-running, spin-twirling. Moving, always moving away from him. And he was running, always running after her. Trying to get close to her brightness…
Until that night she came to him and was quiet. She made so little noise, he almost didn’t see her standing beside his cot. There was no brightness about her, just a ghost in the darkness. She looked at him as he sat up. There was something wrong with her eyes, those always-alive and dancing tiger-gold eyes that crinkled in the corners and sparkled even when there’d been no light. Her eyes looked at him in a quiet way--a dead way.
Fear crawled up the back of his neck, a spider he couldn’t shake off. Mango opened her palm and held it up to him, not saying a word. He reached for the flint, but Mango shook her head. She took a few steps closer, the smell of her still her own, still the girl he knew. He felt his cheeks heat and was suddenly, stupidly grateful she didn’t let him light the lantern.
He finally saw it then, the thing she wanted him to see. A dull red circle inked in the center of her small hand, the tiny wrinkle of her lifeline cutting a pale zigzag through it. He swallowed hard, wishing he had his pants on so he could be eye-level with her. He tucked the blanket closer around himself and waited.
Mango’s eyes darted around the small room, prey-like. The quiet was getting to him, the quiet of her.
“How long do you have?” He kept his voice steady, but he didn’t look at her; couldn’t yet. Not until he knew for sure he was right.
“Tomorrow. At sundown.” Mango’s whispery soft voice, a shadow of her usually shrill, coppery voice.
He looked at her then, taking in her slenderness, all angles and long sinewy lines, her tanned skin that always had a softness to it, a silkiness. He forced himself to look at her face. She looked back at him, steady, calm.
He looked down. “We could… We could run away. I’ll help you.”
He wanted desperately to be brave enough to stand up, pants or no pants, and press her small body close to his and hold her. Hold her so hard she’d fall into him, hot and soft, the two of them melding into something larger than one girl and one boy, something large enough to fight the monster with a red circle of the phoenix on his gates. But he wasn’t brave enough.
He stared at the still water for a long time. The sun was high enough up to where he knew the bell would ring any minute. He didn’t think he could stomach it. The wedding of the Prefect to the girl he always pictured growing old with would break him, even if he hadn’t seen her in all these months, not since that night. He’d heard about the child, of course. They all had. And that they’d almost killed her over it, over not doing it right to where the baby had made it. He never did learn if it was a boy or a girl.
He dreamt of her trying to do the thing she was too small to do, and he knew she’d have tried hard as she could to make that baby come out flailing and squalling. She would have given anything to see it dance, even if she did hate the man who put it there.
Old man Eagen took him to the stream the day it was over and showed him the blood still fresh on the bank. The water was moving then, the way it was meant to, but it never reached the blood. He had washed it away as best he could, his hands scrubbed raw by the grit and the sand. He didn’t want Mango to see it if she went there again. Somehow, he felt that she would.
He stood and took a deep breath, the strange sweetness still sticky in the damp air. A bird trilled downstream and he turned, shocked at the broken silence. And he saw it then, a frayed sun-yellow ribbon floating on the still water. Brightness scrubbed dark.
Photo Credit: @@
This is an entry for Art Writing Contest #4. You can follow the link to the contest and all the nifty entries (there are a ton glorious ones there).https://steemit.com/contest/@gmuxx/art-prompt-writing-contest-4
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With many thanks to the fantastic folks at the writers block fiction workshop. You can find your way there by clicking below: