Nine Moons in a River of Stars: Phase Five (Marrow Book 5) by Xen

Author:Xen [Xen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

xiii

BY THE TIME JANE REALIZED just how deep her roots had grown, her feet were already bound to the floor.

She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, staring through her single eye, watching for hours on end as the television followed those tall, horned beings through the rituals of a tea ceremony where every step seemed to take hours of slow-time movement, holding her captured as she waited for each gradual process to complete. The heating of the water, the brewing of the tea, the slow serving in gradual stop-motion pours that made her wonder if her single panoramic field of vision—everything focused as if through a camera lens, yet taking in more, wider, than she could with two eyes—was making everything appear to move at a snail’s pace, altering her perception of time.

They’d yet to drink. Not even in the moments when she’d managed to break away, break their spell, to speak to those reporters on the phone.

But the tea in their shallow, small, dish-like cups glimmered as if someone had infused it with liquid gold.

It was alive, she thought dully.

The same way many things in Marrow were becoming alive. Or perhaps they’d always been alive, and she just hadn’t had the eyes to see.

In the moment when the first of the beings lifted a cup to its lips over the course of long minutes, taking a single, delicate sip, Jane realized she was parched. This full-body thirst—not just her dry tongue, but something she felt as if her skin was drying up in paper-thin crackling wrinkles, her muscles aching to soak in moisture before they dried into desiccated ropes.

Water. The kitchen, the sink, the water dispenser in the refrigerator, she didn’t care. She just wanted water. So she tried to stand.

And ripping pain tore through her calves as if someone had reached inside her and pulled her veins loose from her flesh, and tugged on them like a puppet’s strings.

With a cry, she dropped back down and twisted to peer down at her legs.

They were covered in red welts now; she’d forgotten her parents, forgotten her mother’s ga-ga-ga and her father’s hnngh and unngh, the two of them just backdrop noise—and she’d not even felt the pain of them trying to get her attention with lashing roots, whip-snap tendrils, their bite nothing compared to the hard smack of the canes she’d grown desensitized to.

But the welts weren’t the only things marking her legs.

She was growing.

From her pores, instead of the hairs she meticulously shaved off for no one but herself…

She was growing.

Thin tendrils of flesh, but as they wound down toward the floor they turned darker, swirls of papery bark covering them—and when she touched one it felt stiff and woody to her fingertips, but made her shudder with the sensation of her nerve endings infused through it. She could feel the touch on those tiny root vines, and that more than anything drove it home:

She was rooting in place, just like her parents. Binding herself to this place.

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