The Mother of the Tree of Life, Aleister Hanek [best way to read ebooks txt] 📗

blood. I feel this planet just the way you feel your own body, and because your body is a part of this planet I feel your suffering too. I do know suffering, Mercadia, and more than that I know yours.”
She wants to scream at him again but she has not the energy nor can she take in such a deep breath again. She stares at the floor, and pretends that she is not listening to him so she can pretend that he is the villain.
She has to put a face on this whole situation after all, and his is the only one she knows of to blame.
“You still shouldn’t call me a girl.” She whispers with the voice of the suffering child. “I’m somebody’s mother now. That makes me more than a girl.”
“We are all sons and daughters.”
Obeying her intuition and not her childish stubbornness, Mercadia looks at the spirit’s face. She is honestly paying attention to him now, and the wailing baby in her soul hates her for it.
“Feel not sorry for yourself, Mercadia, for that will make you weak. Pity is the modern malignancy, and will grow in you tumors far larger than that bundle you’re carrying now. Pity yourself not, Mercadia, for such self-indulgence makes a plump seed for evil, and will turn your little bundle into murderous flora.”
Logically, she should not believe it, but intuitively she understands that this spirit knows what she is incubating.
“It isn’t human, is it?” The thing in her that distrusts the spirit has become silent, but not dead. “I am number one hundred.”
“Yes, Mercadia, and that is why you mustn’t surrender to your corruption, for it is your spirit that feeds your child.”
“You said it’s not human.” She spews harsh with distrust.
“But it is still your child. It is a sentient thing. You are the Mother of the Tree of Life.”
Hearing her proper title, Mercadia’s well of pride fills up again, and thus her child is fed.
“You said murderous flora.” She asks suspicious.
“If you feed your child with wickedness, less than righteous emotion, then it will suck this planet dry after you have given birth to it, and all the nourishment in the world will be dissolved. The only nutrients that sentient things will find will be in each other, and rampant cannibalism will be the end of all societies.”
He speaks not then, and she feels dread grow in her belly as large as her bundle until she can make him finish. “Or?” She demands encouraging him to keep talking.
“Love and righteousness will turn it into a great tree. It will dig its roots deep into the planet, and there shall be no more plagues.”
Suddenly, despite the gravity of his claim, Mercadia feels like she is floating. “No more plagues?” Though she feels skeptical, the hope that this is true outshines all of her doubt, “you mean that Milera will never see another plague ever again?”
“Well,” he sounds uncertain for the first time and Mercadia feels struck down, “plague is a loose term here in Milera. Women will no longer birth abominations, but natural disasters that humans have nothing to do with will certainly still happen.”
Mercadia is much less impressed now; she believed she was stopping all natural disasters too. This damned spirit shouldn’t have said ‘plague.’
But regardless! Her people have been ruined by these plagues for hundreds of years and for so long they have dreaded that they would go on as long as humans were on Milera. Cynics have been sure that the plagues would outlast the human race. And she can end all of that, is destined to end all of that. She’ll be one of the most important figures in human history.
The Mother of the Tree of Life.
She has forgotten her pain, and will not remember it until she tries to stand up again.
“What is your name spirit?”
“I am Melkam.”
Mercadia’s face falls though her spirit stays up. “That was the name of the ninety-ninth plague.”
“Yes.”
“You’re named for a plague?”
“I am that plague, all things born from the loins of a woman are granted souls, human or not. I sense, I feel, I think just as you do, though much more.”
Though she hates him, she admires what he is. This… solid spirit who claims that he feels all of Milera as though the planet were his body; he can destroy those deadly bullets, vanish, and become vapor. Surely he must be an immortal as a spirit of the planet.
“Can I become like you?” She asks, and she sees something on that face but she doesn’t think it’s pity. It couldn’t be, not after he dishonored the very idea of pity a moment ago.
“You are human.” He states impassive, cryptic as her father at his worst.
“That’s not an answer.” she says, pretending authority that she would never use with her father. He seems to ignore her impudence because he changes the subject.
“Not all of my territory lies on your path. The first two you will find to help you are a married couple living in the hills miles from the nearest town. The husband is Malk, the wife is Ning. You will be safe there.”
“Good, I was afraid I’d have to suffer your company this whole time.”
Melkam is not offended, cannot be offended, for he knows her suffering just as much as she herself. “On more thing, Mercadia.” As he speaks his skin gives way into dark, opaque fog which vanishes within inches of him.
“What?”
“If they give their lives for you, then your child will suck the life from this world.” Then he melts into chunks and her cold vomit spills all over the floor again. The only trace left of Melkam is the frustration burning up her brain.
Mercadia tries to sleep, but she can’t even close her eyes.

4

Malk’s Ghurka knife hacks through the stem of a giant avocado, which falls directly into the basket on top of the rest of today’s harvest. One more and the whole basket would spill and splatter against the stones. But Malk is a careful man, and has spilt not a thing since he married Ning at thirteen. He must not drop a thing, lest he become careless someday and drop her. And he never has.
But there was a time some twenty years ago when he couldn’t even hold her in time.
Malk sheaths the knife in his belt, then leaps down to the ground. He lands on his feet then hoists the basket over his shoulder with his one arm, then starts up the hill.
He is a very tall man, blonde hair the shape and length of mown grass. His nose is flat as a cliffside and his eyes are the opaque blue of an exotic gecko. His gaze is like a laser to most, but to his wife it is relaxing as the summer sun.
In the village a few miles away –where they used to do business from time to time trading their roots and vegetables for equally important resources- it was joked behind their backs that a man with just one hand couldn’t appreciate a woman such as Ning, for she is exotic as his eyes and warm as his gaze. They knew of these jokes and laughed at them far more than the villagers did at them for they make love like worshippers of sex.
Malk reaches the top of the hill and sets down the basket, smiling, silent as a gecko. He creeps across the soft, humid soil; it is as fertile as the men into made mulch by Melkam. The dirt is wonderfully sensuous between his toes and beneath his toenails. He sees Ning is wriggling her toes in the soil too, uplifting enormous sweet onions with a hooked pole.
Ning thrusts the pole into the soil and it sinks in like a candle into frosting, then Malk wraps his great arm around her waist and lifts her up against his chest. Ning yelps but in joy and wriggles her limbs feigning desperate struggle. He hefts her breasts with his forearm touching nerves beneath her skin. She moans and smiles with such wide lips, they are so wide across her face they nearly spread from ear to ear. She wraps her hands over his shoulders and hangs so he is wearing her like a necklace, and can run his hands wherever he likes.
Malk pulls up Ning’s sundress and runs his hand up her right leg, touches his fingertips over the pearl-smooth row of teeth where her groin becomes her leg. She shivers outside, quivers inside.

They both came from manipulative families. Being born mutated and three limbed, Malk naturally was not lived through by his parents as fiercely as Ning. Instead he was used by his family with that fierceness, and thus he understood her, and thus they met.
Malk was used as a plowman and was hired out to whoever bid highest. The one arm he was born with was extraordinarily strong and more than made up for the one he was without. He grew tall fast and in that way made his family thrilled they could start renting his services right away. Always the highest bidder –there were many—and the last bidder was Ning’s family.
Ning was lived through her parents in the usual way. She was expected to take the education they made for her, marry the man they sold her to on the date of her first birthday, then produce more heirs than ever her mother could. For her mother could only produce her, the measly little thing –she wouldn’t be voluptuous until womanhood—with an unnaturally broad mouth. She’d have to make up for mother’s deficiency.
They ran away together on his first day in their fields. They caught eyes at once, she on the third floor watching him through the great window, and he staring at the building plowing his first row. She got her permission to run out to the fields to converse with the plowman. She followed him and talked to him as he worked. By the time his work for the day was done they were in love.
By sundown they’d run away together.
He carried her most of the way. They traveled, vagabonding across the country ‘til they found the barren hill. It was owned by a poor family who’d been planting roots with no financial luck in town. The happy couple bought the property for a few coins they found on their quest for this home. They hated this place. But they loved being alone together, they loved that they had a home.
It was like an anthill in ruined concrete. This farmland had very little hope of producing any kind of food and according to the people they bought it from had no hope of selling in the town miles away. But they had survived worse conditions during their travels, and accepted this desolate place as home; it would mean no more traveling.
When the plague Melkam hit, Malk and Ning were among those who had no warning. He was inside the house, sleeping in for the last time of his adult life. Ning was outside harvesting miniscule potatoes from brittle earth. He heard the rumble of that floating death river before it came, but it rushed by and made their barren home a land of mulch. Malk only had time to look out the window when it happened, and Ning was trying to run inside. She was caught by her leg as though by hooks and white water and was thrown far down the jagged dusty hill.
When Malk ran out of the house the plague had already passed and Ning was at the foot of the hill leaking with blood and mulch. He kicked up dust