Page 39 of This Vicious Hunger
“Oh lord,” I say. “You’re right—that ending is horrible.”
The next tale Olea tells has none of the sadness of the last, a story about a hen who became trapped in the body of a human and developed the ability to talk to certain types of animals.
“You’re making them up!” I laugh as she finishes yet another story. “There’s no such thing as a dog the size of a bear.”
“Not any more,” Olea says morosely, and I laugh harder. She is different here, bolder in these lively moments than she ever was near the walls of the garden. It’s as if some part of her has come alive, happiness carved from chunks of ice. But she is still a know-it-all.
“What about the wolves?” I say. “We haven’t had wolves in Isliano since the Dark Ages.”
“And you think these tales weren’t told during the Dark Ages?” Olea turns her face towards mine and arches an eyebrow. “Thora, stories about the stars have been told since man first told tales around fires, long before our Descalous separated from the Old Continent.
“But they don’tmeananything.”
“They don’t have to mean anything.” Olea props herself up on her elbow. Now that our lips aren’t locked, she is careful to maintain a small distance between our bodies, though my heart is screaming for anything but that. My skin tingles where she has touched it, like the white-hot itching of a hundred nettle stings. “They’re stories. Stories exist for a lot of reasons.”
“Yes, parables and fables and—”
“Sometimes a story is just a story,” Olea says, but something in her face says otherwise.
“Do you really believe that?”
“You like to interrogate everything, don’t you.” It isn’t a question, but she doesn’t say it with disappointment, merely interest.
“Don’t you?” I ask. “I learned young that you can’t stop learning about the world just because somebody tells you that you should. Out there”—I wave my hand—“women hardly read. They hardly write. It’s only by virtue of my father and the death rites that I know to read any written stories at all. And even then, if you just accept everything you’re told…”
“Accepting a story for what it is doesn’t mean you have to stop questioning the world,” Olea says quietly. “It just means that there is a time and a place. Some stories teach you to be brave, some teach you to be strong, and some make you laugh. Does laughter come cheaper than bravery or strength? Do you need all of these stories at once?”
I fold my arms behind my head and gaze upwards. The sky is smooth as dark water, speckled with thousands upon thousands of tiny flecks of light. Olea’s insistence makes me think of the gossip Leo so desperately said he didn’t want to spread about her—and her supposed “illness”—the likes of which he told me anyway, and I wonder if she has been haunted by this before. Perhaps she and Petaccia are the same, both trapped by expectations of gender, of rumours and stories told by people who don’t know better.
“So it’s like with the trees and plants in this garden,” I say, giving myself the time to think. “You’re saying that there are tales about them—like the manchineel being the death tree—but we don’t always have to believe them?”
“It’s not about believing really,” Olea says thoughtfully. “More that we shouldn’t take everything at face value. I’m certain there is truth in the stories about most of the plants in this garden.”
“So, the tree is poison?” I ask, reaching to prod at my lips.They still feel swollen, though I think that’s likely more from the kissing than the fruit. But was the kissingbecauseof the fruit? This thought doesn’t sit well with me, and I drag myself a little more upright against the fountain.
“Yes,” Olea says. Then, “No. It’s… Can’t it be both?”
“You know that’s not how this works.”
“But it sort of is,” Olea argues. “It’s poison. Its natural defence is one that could easily hurt you, or me, or anybody else. It hasn’t hurt us, though.”
“Did youknowit wouldn’t hurt me?” I ask.
“Well, no—”
“And you didn’t think to tell me I was taking a risk?”
“The tree chose not to hurt you,” Olea argues. “It accepted you. It’s providence.”
“You think I didn’t get hurt because the treechosefor that to be so?” I shake my head to clear the fog in my brain, but it feels like I’m wading through treacle. She sounds just like Petaccia with all her talk about fate of discovery. “Meaning, what, you gave me that fruit to eat based on a hypothesis alone? Surely that’s exactly the kind of arrogance that gets people killed by plants like these.”
“It’s not arrogance! I’m telling you the treetrustsus. It’s like…” Olea clenches the fingers of her left hand together and spreads them apart as she gropes for an explanation. “Okay, so that tree—do you see the one in the far ditch?” She points and I follow her finger to the edge of the tree line. There grows a small moonlighter, maybe six or seven feet tall with palm-sized leaves and hanging clusters of pinkish berries that might be similar to raspberries—though it’s hard to tell from this distance.
“The slightly fuzzy one? I noticed it the other night. The whole thing is like the skin of a peach.”
“Some people call it a stinging tree,” Olea says. “Dendrocnide moroidesofficially, imported from the rainforests in the south. Those fine hairs are—I’m not sure what they call it, but each one contains a virulent neurotoxin so strong, if you even brush up against it you’ll be in agony within minutes. And if by some virtue you manage to deal with the pain the first time, heat can reactivate the pain later if you can’t remove the hairs.”
“Okay…?” I say hesitantly.
