Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
It was the first time Willow heard her father cry. What a terrifying thought. Like walking into a church and all the pews are empty and the stained-glass windows are just glass. She didn’t believe in God anymore. She also didn’t believe in her father.
It was six in the morning, when she awoke to the sound of shuffling and a wail like a braying dog; everything swathed in blue save for the candlelight, flickering through the door to the master bedroom. It was ajar, cleaving a fiery red stripe across the landing.
Willow shook, her nine–year–old body unable to contain the vicious emotions that tore at it. Sweat stuck to her nightgown, her skin feeling utterly too small to hide in. Across her young cheeks, red and full, tears slit shining lines that burned. She made no sound. She had never cried like this before.
Willow thought of when her rocking horse broke, and the splintered wood gashed her leg. Blood soaked the rug, thick and warm, while she screamed and screamed and screamed. She wailed because, in her small life, she had never experienced pain such as that before; whilst her father left the house on their horse and raced for the physician, her mother cradled her, the servants tying white cloth around her leg that continued to blossom sickly red. She cried loudly, a tidal wave of pain and bewilderment wracking her ribcage, eroding the bone. Her lungs scalded with the force of her wails, please look after me . Please hold me . I don’t know what I’m doing .
On the landing, staring at the burning light, her sadness crested. Then crested. Then crested. That infernal tidal wave pulsing into every fibre, the marrow of her bone full with it, her lungs drowning in it. It never broke, never pummelled against the cage of her heart before ebbing away. Never soothed. There was nowhere for it to go.
Her mother was dead. There was nowhere for it to go.
Willow walked to the door, already knowing what would be on the other side. As she rounded it, she saw her mother’s wheelchair, pushed into the corner, the red flickering bouncing off it and setting it ablaze. The candlelight made everything look like fire.
In the middle of the scorch, her father cradled the body of her mother, lit alight, so bright Willow couldn’t see, couldn’t meet it. Her mother’s pale flesh charring and breaking away—void, nothing left—and her father, blonde hair stuck to his skin, cradling the ashes.