go to the next part of Storm
And so I let him drink his fill as the rain and thunder pounded me into the mud and the storm raged on.
His tongue in my back was obscene: scrape scrape scraping the flesh of the scars and lapping up my blood. Each time his tongue probed my old wounds, I felt a deep pain knock through me from my back straight through to my chest. It was like a rude boy on the playground throcking me on my breastbone. Hard.
I was still, still altogether still but for flinching with the pain, with the flashes of lightning, with the crashes of thunder.
Finally, with one long lingering swipe in my wing-scars, he was done. I heard him swallow. I heard his small sigh of satisfaction.
I was dimly aware of being picked up by the waist and carried.
Then, as if the pain of his invasive tongue had been a dream, I felt him RIP out a handful of my invisible feathers.
The searing pain spread through me as if I had been hit by lightning. I thought perhaps I had been. My bones were burning. My fingertips and toenails felt blackened, burnt. I convulsed sharply. I made some kind of keening noise.
He held me more firmly by the waist and said:
The shocking pain continued to hit me in waves. With each ebb and flow my mind cleared. I was weak, very weak, but able to focus on his words, the storm, the oak tree he was carrying me to.
Sometimes pain can be helpful that way.
With clarity returning I heard another voice in my head. Someone else. She said:
"oh, my blues sister. FIGHT.
I could fight, I thought to myself. I don't have to be still, still, altogether still. But I am so weak now, so tired. And there is the storm, pounding me, and HIM assaulting me...
We had reached the oak. The only tree on this prairie for miles. He lifted me up and put my back to the tree. I looked at his smiling face, at my luminous rainbow feathers in his hand, at the fingers splayed on my chest.
Lightning flashed on the horizon behind him. Thunder rolled and seemed to make the prairie grasses wave.
Holding me high up on that tree with one hand to my chest, he spread my invisible wings. He stretched out my right arm. The one with the broken wrist.
I screamed as he positioned the broken wrist and wing-tip on a branch. The pain gave me clarity once more. I heard the voice again. She said:
"just cause you can't FLY
I took at deep breath to say something but--
He took one of my long, beautiful, translucent feathers and held it above my broken wrist, my trapped useless wing and said
and drove it in to me. Into the tree. I was pinned to the tree.
His face was beatific. The rain on his face made it look like he was crying.
Pain upon pain upon pain I couldn't scream but only sigh as he drove in the feather and hung me on the tree o god the pain was like waves waves waves only NOW the wave was HUGE and crashing and I saw a red, red rose floating floating floating on that wave of pain...
My sister said in my head:
"fightfightFIGHTdon'tGIVEitAWAY"The pain song, I must sing my pain song...
And he was positioning my other wrist, my other wing. He was going to crucify me on this tree.
He said as he held the other feather poised above my wrist.
The pain song. Pain will make me strong, I thought. Pain will save me. Pain makes everything clear.
Weakly, in a breathy whisper I intoned:
"bless the hand that smacks me into oblivion."
but it was lost in the thunder.
And he drove the feather IN.
tears and blood and rain and scorching PAIN and the thunder like a drum or a heartbeat and I'm hanging on the green man's cross here with clouds like blood seeping across the sky and inside blood like waves pounding pounding carrying a red red rose floating above the pain almost like flying...
I opened cracked lips and began to sing. My voice like a small animal trying to walk on broken legs, like branches crackling and snapping in my throat but I sang anyway:
and I was riding that red wave of pain. Arms and wings outstretched and nailed to the lone tree with my own feathers.
He looked up at me and his smile froze in place. Quickly he grabbed my ankles and shoved them down hard on the rough bark. He drew the last feather back as if he were going to spear my feet with it.
I sang on, my voice rising and falling with the waves of pain, waves of thunder rolling, waves of prairie grass sighing:
"nou goth moon under wode
i can't say it aloud
nou goth moon under tre--
i am a broken bough"
The rain had soaked him and made him seem more fragile. Delicate. All his features were slick and bright with rain and lightning flashes. He paused and said:
And I chanted with waves in my voice:
He took three quick steps back and crouched there, looking at me reproachfully.
The pain song had me now and was flowing out strong and deep and wide.
Pain has always been my friend. My savior.
I saw a red red rose blossom on his temple. He pointed the remaining feather at me and...disappeared. Moving off with the storm...
My voice swelled as the thunder rolled away and the storm passed, blowing across the prairie:
My head dropped, my voice almost gone now. I finished:
"bless the hand that smacks me into oblivion."
I sighed. The storm had died down to a light patter of rain, soaking me gently. He had disappeared, taking one of my feathers.
And I was still hanging from this tree.
I pulled weakly at the feathers through my wrists. My heels tapped feebly at the tree. So weak, so little blood in me now...how could I get down?
Dawn was not too far away. I could feel the sun behind the clouds, waiting to burst forth bright and red. Actually, the light of dawn was kind to me. Pleasant and warm. But once the sun cleared the horizon...
The arrows of light would pierce me and I would die.
Like Saint Sebastian, pinned to the tree.
And the first wave of ruddy pink light broke through the remaining clouds and washed over me. Gently, oh so gently...
I squirmed on my cross. I didn't want to be a martyr.
I don't want to die yet.
Won't someone please take me down?
take me down take me down take me down
take me down
please...
copyright 1995 by Julieann M. Brown-Micko
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