Is he shaking?
He dandles the knife with the mock clumsiness of an elder brother teasing a younger. “You must have something to tell me. Surely the Whore delivered you for a reason.” And they approach the northern entrance, the Way of Upright Kings, where the peach trees forever bloom out of season, finding naught but a great black rope of smoke hanging heavenward from the Mansion’s shattered maw, inking the clouds. “Shh … Shh … Just tell me …” The knife pricks across his cheek. “Tell me …” And Lord Mountain turns as if from between worries, and they see it, the black shaft jutting from their hearts. And he watches, his spirit cringing, flinching, warding, even though he cannot move; the point’s lazy swing, the hanging heartbeat above his pupil, then the drop, as though everything seen were the skin of a grape. Someone grimaces and screams. How does one love in such times? Aisarinqu whispers, cupping his head against her, so that his tears make a cheek of her breast. A laugh with the reed timbre of mortality. His face clenched as if about some splintered outrage. A mouth hung about emptiness. Something. Something in the meat. And it dawns that he does not comprehend these beasts.
A man reclines in the grasses that wreath his head, stares down at him with uncommon familiarity. And he just … pushes … her … Aisralu … A motion too banal to be anything but murderous and insane, opening a door, perhaps, or closing one, and he feels it, the kiss of skin forming to skin, the hand of the father across the nape of the daughter, the cherished daughter; a push and nothing more, an effort slight enough to slip the nets of awareness, to be no effort at all, and still, miraculously, impossibly, violent with excess, savage, a crime unlike any other; the bare palm against the nape of her neck, her shoulders hunched about a ravaged womb, his arm extending, the gentle insistence of nudging a younger brother toward a maid, and an entire life tipping, a cherished life, an engulfing presence, tipping, how? how? the push floating into slipping, plummet … The wind barges through the walnut tree, a groaning susurrus. Tipping, the beloved voice crimped high, a kicking intake of breath, a sound that should strike sparks. No … And a life slips into the abyss, dropping like water, lines sprawling across the plummet, shrinking into something small enough to be swallowed … Shrieking. No …
“You make me … curious …”
A man dangles from the glare of blood and sun. There is even envy in his gaze.
Please, Papa …
A final revelation. Sunlight cracking through spanning limbs. The whole mountain wheezes for the weeping of thousands, the wreckage of … The breeze burning, eating. The world tipping.
No.
A bare palm against a cherished back—