Read Online The Island of Excess Love by Francesca Lia Block - Free Book Online Page B

someone.”
    In the book it was because Polydorus, the son of the Trojan king Priam, had been killed and the blood signified that Aeneas must give Polydorus a proper burial.
    I turn away, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice, but the thought of the dripping branch makes it difficult. “There’s no one else to bury.”
    â€œNot yet,” Hex says.
    I turn back to him. He holds the branch up again but there’s no sign of the blood anymore. “Something nasty is going on, isn’t it?” After the Earth Shaker, The Odyssey had at least provided us with some clues, served as a sort of guide. The parallels with The Aeneid are less clear, perhaps a testament to the ever-growing chaos of the world around us.
    If stories are no longer our salvation we have even less hope than before.
    We build another fire from branches that do not bleed and make our bed on the moss among the roots of a tree. I try to tell Hex that one of us should stay awake, keep watch—what if some other plant decides to hemorrhage in the night—but I’m too tired and sleep is welcome. As a goddess.

 
    8
    Â 
    THE FLOWER CRADLE
    Â 
    T HREE CREATURES ARE STANDING over me and Hex.
    They are young women with long hair and skin that shimmers wetly in the sunlight. Their breasts, legs, and feet are bare and they wear silk scarves tied around their hips. But they’re not ordinary women. Colorful layers of feathers grow from their shoulders and the webbing of wings that are attached on the undersides of their arms. It’s like a work by Viktor Vasnetsov, a Russian painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The painting I’m reminded of depicts two women, one fair, one dark, with the bodies and wings and talons of birds. They are perched in a tree, singing siren songs.
    â€œWhy have you come here?” the black-haired and feathered creature before me asks.
    â€œOur ship crashed on this island,” I say as Hex and I clamber to our feet, using each other for support.
    Her golden eyes flash. “You must come with us.”
    The three of them lift their arms in unison, a flare of color and a shwoosh of wind as their shoulders seem to dislocate and wings fan open; I move closer to Hex.
    â€œWe just want to get home,” I tell the bird women.
    â€œHome,” they say, fixing us with their molten gaze, flapping their gaudy pinions. “Go home.”
    â€œWe don’t know how. We’ve been trying but our ship is ruined.”
    â€œRuined,” they all say.
    They are still eying me with great scrutiny and I gulp down saliva.
    â€œYou must come with us to see the king.”
    â€œWho?” I ask, but I already know. I whisper to Hex, reminding him of my vision of the crowned man but Hex has probably already thought of that.
    â€œThe king of the Island of Love.” They high step in the sand as if doing some synchronized dance. “He’s been waiting for you.”
    I have to repress a shudder. Hex and I exchange a glance, which tells me he’s feeling the same icy signal of warning to his nerve endings. I’m afraid to go but we must meet this king, if he’s the same one with Venice, Ez, and Ash in my vision. He was in my dream, too, and in the other vision, the one I had before we left. As was this island. The women call it Love; I told Ez and Ash it was the Island of Excess Love.
    â€œTake us there. Please,” I say.
    *   *   *
    We follow the bird women along the beach, in the opposite direction from the forest and across sand dunes. Spreading out below us on the other side of the dunes is an expanse of green hills covered with citrus groves, grape orchards, and palm trees. A drove of deer are grazing there.
    â€œIt looks like we won’t have to deal with any Giants at least,” Hex says, nodding at the herd.
    But what will we have to deal with?
    There’s a large structure glittering in the distance.