Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust Page 0,78

fight a div, I can’t see in the dark, I’m not even—”

She tripped over a root, but Parvaneh caught her before she fell. Soraya straightened, but Parvaneh didn’t move away, still holding Soraya’s arms. “You’re not even what?” she asked.

Soraya had spoken without thinking, but now she faced the truth directly. I’m not even poisonous anymore, she had meant to say. But when she tried to say it aloud, her throat closed up. She had betrayed her family to be rid of that curse; she had no right now to mourn its absence.

But Parvaneh heard the words anyway. “You miss it now, don’t you?”

The lump in Soraya’s throat began to loosen at hearing the truth from someone else’s voice. Why was it that all of her secrets came to light whenever she was alone with Parvaneh? Was it her, or was it the darkness, the feeling of being so far from her old life that anything seemed permissible—or forgivable?

“You must think me such a fool,” Soraya said, her voice wavering. “You warned me, but I didn’t believe you. And yet I believed him. I trusted him so completely.”

Parvaneh’s hands tightened around her arms, and her eyes flashed in the darkness. “He gave you reason to trust him—and then he abused that trust. Don’t waste your anger on yourself. Save it for him.” Her hands fell away, and she stood there for a moment, watching Soraya before she stalked off in a different direction. “Follow me!” she called back.

Soraya quickly followed, not wanting to lose sight of Parvaneh in the dark forest. “Where are we going?”

Parvaneh slowed down for Soraya to catch up and said in an impassioned flurry, “You’ve lived your whole life with this curse because of him, and you can’t even enjoy yourself once you’re free of it because of him. Why should you suffer for what he did?”

Parvaneh stormed ahead again, and Soraya followed, muttering to herself, “But where are we going?”

Somewhat abruptly, Parvaneh stopped, and Soraya nearly collided with her. Parvaneh sniffed the air, put her hand on a nearby tree, and nodded. “Hornbeams,” she said. She led Soraya a little farther ahead, into a patch of moonlight that managed to pierce through the canopy. “Wait here,” she said, and then walked over to one of the trees. Hornbeams, she had said. Soraya looked around at the not-quite-identical trees around her, all of them with thick, sinewy trunks.

When Parvaneh returned, her hands were sticky with tree sap. “Roll up your sleeves.”

Soraya considered questioning her, but something about the excited glow of Parvaneh’s eyes and their sudden rush through the forest made her want to play along. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress, which were hopelessly dingy by now, and said, “Now what?”

“Hold out your arms.”

Soraya obeyed, her stomach already flipping in anticipation, because she could guess what would come next. Parvaneh stepped forward and brushed her hands along the insides of Soraya’s forearms, and Soraya’s entire spine straightened at once, her breath catching in her throat. “What are you doing?” she said in an exhale.

“Hush,” Parvaneh said. “You’ll see.”

Once Soraya’s forearms and her palms were coated with tree sap, Parvaneh stepped away, leaning her back against the nearest tree trunk. “Now wait,” she whispered.

Ordinarily, Soraya might have felt ridiculous standing in the middle of a forest with tree sap on her outstretched arms. But the forest was alive. She felt it pulsing all around her. And so she knew she wasn’t simply standing, but waiting, with arms open to embrace whatever envoy the forest was about to send to her.

She didn’t have to wait long. She heard it first—a fluttering sound that seemed to come from the air—and then something tickled her arm. When she looked down, she saw a gray-brown moth settled on her left forearm, wings opening and closing leisurely.

Soraya barely breathed, afraid she would scare it away—or worse, that it would go still and fall dead to the ground, as that first butterfly did so many years ago. But her skin was covered in tree sap, not poison, and so the moth didn’t die, and soon it was joined by others. One—two—a third that landed on the very center of her palm. To them, she was no different from one of the trees, a source of nourishment and life, not death or destruction. Soraya laughed, and her eyes went blurry with tears.

Now she understood why Parvaneh had brought her here. Here in the forest, far enough away to forget about Azad