The Island of Excess Love by Francesca Lia Block

Author:Francesca Lia Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627792394
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

10

ABOMINATIONS

I WAKE TO SCREAMS. Have you ever heard anyone being tortured? Have you ever heard anyone burning to death? There aren’t words for this sound. It has to be a nightmare. But it’s not; I don’t think so.

The room I fell asleep in is gone. I’m dressed in rags fastened together with thorns, lying on a large stone surrounded by weeds and rubble. Here and there I recognize a broken piece of a chair, a smashed cup, some shards of mirror. The air smells not like flowers and honey but like toxic smoke. There is no roof and the sky above me is dark and roiling with clouds.

I slide off the stone, scraping my bare legs.

I run over the ground, cutting my feet on sharp rocks. I run toward the screams. Agonized shrieks. Starting to diminish.

There’s a fire burning. Black smoke billows up. The smell of charred flesh meets my nostrils. On the pyre I can make out what looks like a man’s body with blackened skin. Then the flames flare up and consume him. On the ground by the fire is a pair of antlers.

In The Aeneid the queen, Dido, burned herself on a pyre when her lover Aeneas left her to build a new civilization. But I did not leave the king. Someone took him away from me, took his life.

I reach to touch my left eye socket. There’s a piece of glass there, that’s all. I shut my right eye to test it out and the world goes black. The magic is gone. The king is dead.

I put one hand to my belly and one to my throat. Other hands catch me from falling. Venice, Ez, Ash, all dressed in rags like me. Argos is with them, too.

“What happened?” Venice says, biting his lip, fighting tears as he stares into the fire. I draw him to me so he can’t see. I must protect him; I can’t fall apart now.

“I don’t know. We have to leave, though.”

It’s hard to know where to go. The entire landscape has changed. It’s just dirt and rubble and rock as far as the eye can see. But the ocean—that’s still there. You can smell it on the cold wind. That’s where we have to go.

We move as quickly as we can over the ground on our bare feet, trying to avoid broken glass and the sharper rocks.

In my mind I am calling for Hex, even though it’s too late, even though he can’t hear me. Even though I’ve betrayed him.

We’re down at the beach now. The sand is littered with bones and glass and bricks and splintered wood. But we’re by the sea at least. Maybe we can get away. How can we get away?

A body lies broken on the ground. Arms and legs twisted in the wrong directions. Neck risted to the side. Hair and beard matted with blood. Nose cut off, one ear missing. Eyes? Eye sockets. Empty. Birded and beaked.

My mind is made of one-word shrieks of shock.

Merk. Merk.

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