Wither

They look to me at dusk.

Hollow and hungry, they squint against the azure sky and search for any sign of movement in the base, the body, the spire scratching the indifferent belly of restless clouds. They search for my decisive action for many reasons; I am Oldest, I am Master, I am Power.

They do not know that I am helpless.

My vision lurches, too. I also see blotches in place of stars. Like all of them, I have a torn and ragged place between my ribs that aches and cries when the night is swallowing its own sounds. Shadows and tendrils etch their way through the soil and seep into the roots of our trees. We draw our strength from our Wild, and its nourishment grows ever more pale and evasive. We clamor, reach and cry. Our animals drop dead, our plants crumble to dust, and our precious young vanish like wisps of smoke.

It has been decades since my son vanished, just the same as the others. Some of them were still returning, back then, and I thought that of anyone, a prince might have a chance. The swell of vitality from his departure bolstered our Wild for a time, but it wasn’t nearly enough. His sacrifice felt cheap when days later, the cracking and parching viciously made up for lost time. I raged more than grieved, because a ruler, giving all that she had, should have been worth more.

Years later, we all have even less, and as ever, I must demand it. My ladies are wraiths whittled to bone, and they make way for me only because they would move for a moth’s wing. The frail and brittle pulse of my realm quickens as I step through the courtyard where there used to be gardens, verdant and rich. Now there is only the memory of lush, sculpted greens and flowerbeds, and water that could be wasted on things like wading ponds and fountains.

The last beast of burden perished in autumn, so we pass through the village on foot. I’m followed by my shuffling, slow entourage, handmaidens reaching past their veils to support one another as they sometimes stagger, occasionally kneel. It has nothing to do with their respect for me, or their deference toward my royal status. They are faint with hunger, and if the occasion was not so somber, I would never have made them leave the tower. But of all nights, tonight calls for decorum, and at least the shadow of the grandness my realm once exuded.

I owe her that much.

She knows that I am outside her door. I need no announcement; the dusty street is still and silent, and my subjects watch from slats in shuttered windows. So few of them remain. Almost all of them have lines grooved by ages around their wide and hungry eyes, but this morning, a sound disrupted the silence we’ve all come to know. Primal and mewling and oblivious, it had been stifled swiftly, but it did not matter.

“Your majesty,” she stammers. She drops to her knees, pressing her forehead into the grinding dust, doubtless taking the extra concealed moments to compose herself in my presence. “I was not expecting you.”

Lies are common in my realm. They are more like prayers; ultimately worthless, but comforting in the moment. I humor her.

“Rise,” I command, “for your queen seeks an audience with you.”

Trembling, she stands. She is exhausted, exceeding my realm’s general languor. Sweat clings to her upper lip; dust clings to the sweat. The molecules surrounding her warm skin seem to vibrate; my nose tells me that earlier, she bled in this gritty hovel.

“The honor is too great, Lady.” Her voice is cracked and wavering. She is fighting the urge to scream. I offer her a placid, tempered smile.

“Honor is what brings me to your home,” I say, sweeping past her. She averts her eyes, bows low, struggles to calm the hyperventilating swell of her chest as I survey the otherwise deserted room. I see a kettle and a hearth, a small fire, a floor that has been very recently scoured clean. “I come with news of fortune. You are to be a Noble, and join my court.”

She does not trust herself to speak, or even meet my gaze. She knows that her voice and eyes will betray her, if she does. Her hair hangs lank over her features and I hear her breath shudder on a shallow exhale.

“If you are astonished, you may say so,” I tell her, rounding the side of a dingy mat stuffed with dry, dead pine needles. It has been turned within the last few hours.

“I am,” she forces out, and it only sounds a little like a sob.

I nod to my handmaidens, and they pass to either side of me, dragging the mat aside to reveal a recess in the floorboards. The woman presses her hands over her mouth, and I gaze down into the bundled, softly stirring basket. Even knowing what we would find, the audacity of attempting to hide our realm’s most valuable export is remarkable. Such a trespass would mean a swift execution, in decades past; now, there are so few of us that it actually warrants a promotion. As common as lying in this realm is, I spoke truth when I made this wretch a Noble.

“Please don’t take him,” she whispers.

It requires the strength of two wan handmaidens to lift the basket and set it on the floor. I kneel and graze the back of my hand over the infant’s petal-soft cheek. His sleep is untroubled, for now, but in a few hours he will be hungry. In a few days, he will be nothing at all. I unwrap his swaddle and he seizes and shivers against the sudden chill; his mother lurches forward, but I am the queen. Her will is ashes next to the blaze of my might.

The others have gathered; the grey and shambling crowd are seeping into the streets. They will follow, even if the mother sits swallowed in grief that may yet harden to rage. I lead them, the infant content beneath my cloak, to the edges of our Wild, and all stand solemn vigil as I hand off the infant to one of my handmaidens and pull apart the crumbling, dry soil with my bare hands. I am heedless of the sharp stones that slice into my flesh; my blood mingles, pooling, with the dust, and the infant squalls in discomfort and shock as he is placed in the rough, shallow hole.

We do not call it a grave. We call it a sendoff, because as blood and soil blanket him and the infant’s cries grow muffled and then silent, it is not death. Unburying him would reveal no small body, no trace that he ever existed at all. Every being in attendance know it, and it is why they look to the trees and the bracken. The whispering depths of our Wild seem to yawn wide. Somewhere, inside, a human toddler stumbles blindly and sobs for his mother. We do not have to see him to know that he will not make it far. Heavy footfalls batter and snap fallen branches, we hear a snarl and a shriek to freeze moonlight, and then the silence resumes.

Murmurs ripple through the grim, gathered company. It starts slowly at first, mere crimson pinpricks budding a nearby cluster of bushes. But they swell and ripen with increasing speed, and my subjects rush toward them, their hands and faces stained swiftly dark with the juice of fat red berries that, come morning, will wither and vanish. Tonight, at least, my realm survives, gorging until they are sick and drowsy and sated.

At dawn, they will look away.