Wind

The clouds lean upon the night with threat of a storm but I do not let them break. Yes, I am thirsty for rain, my barked fingers pruned a dry and brittle grey, but I make the clouds wait. A pair of them, boy and girl, he tracing his fingers along my bones, she kicking the leaves of my dead hair. I tell the storm to wait, for I can sense a story in these two, and there is no better thing to quench the throat than story.

Mosquito

I send them a kiss to welcome. The boy yelps when mosquito bites his shoulder, scared as if his blood might abandon his body from one bite. The girl just laughs as I kiss her shoulder. I turn the mosquito’s head away from her and up to the air, sucking away at that laughter, an even warmer lifeblood than that running through the veins of animals. I want to confess to them it has been a long time since I’ve tasted laughter but they pay no attention to my voice in the wind. Instead, they unzip their bags and don jackets, their goosebumps deaf to my speech.

Spider

I spin a web so I might taste the blood my mosquitoes have drunk. As my lips lie twitching within my spider’s web, I can taste their families; though they look like brother and sister, they come from different kin, one from the town past the tips of my toes, the other at the end where my head won’t grow. My spider coughs on the salt in the boy’s kinstream – from all those fish his family eat. This must be how the ocean tastes. My veins are yet to reach such waters, though I hear stories of others like me who inhale the ocean as though it were air. Her family smells of dirt and animal blood, cold dirt tasting of dry metals, making a desert of my mouth, leaving me a stone in my own web.

Owl

He must know the colour of my eyes, for he watches me while she stokes fire. Does he know what makes my bones grow strong, what keeps my skin damp and teeth sharp? Does he merely see my eye, or is he gazing at the expanse of my body? As I open three more of my eyes, I watch him shake. Four more makes a mouse of him, scurrying back to the safety of her. A chuckle creaks from my throat. She tells him it is just the wind.

He must see me now, for he points at my lookings, telling her there are more than before. I open nine more and can now see he has pissed himself, clutching her arm. My whole body sways, drunk on his fear, and I realise he has never seen me before, nor anyone like me, all the way out in his little water haven. Perhaps he will taste better than any story his blood carries. I lean closer now, the fire making a devil of my eyes. I don’t see her take something from her bag, something sharp and shiny. He screams and I can’t see him. I can’t see the fire. I can’t see her plucking out my eyes, but I can hear her stomach, her smile, her muscles. He tells her to keep going, to keep blinding me, but she says no. Do not take more than you need. I lean back, far enough to see them both. She has done this before.

Elephant

They are both approaching now, having gorged themselves on my eyes. He walks heavy upon my skin, as if he knows I can feel him. The boy sings now, perhaps to scare me. She warns him I might follow them, but he strums his throat louder. His words tickle my ears, as they are not yet those of a man, but I still listen. He sings of the albatross who lost his wings and learnt to make boats of bark to fly on water instead of sky. He sings the bird’s name as if it were his own, and that makes the tale taste better. I have dined on this story before, but those men knew not to sing songs about themselves, and so their words were caked in a tired old dust. But the boy, I feel his blood patterning each image he conjures, as if he were pulling his life from deep in his throat. Just for me.

He asks her to sing him a song from her home but she says nothing. She says nothing for some time, and I wonder if she knows I am listening for story and is starving me out of a childish cruelty. I put my ear closer to them, until they can see me. The boy is in awe but the girl says nothing. I push closer and I hear his eyes widen, as if I were prey, but I hear his heart sigh. She tells him that if you whisper a secret to an elephant, they will guide you to a watering hole. He tells her that if he brought back the head of an elephant then his village would make him king. She and I both laugh. I lean my ear down towards my navel and they both follow, perhaps to maim me again, or perhaps to see a story come true.

Waterhole

I still intend to lead them to my mouth, to lick the clean ancestry from their bones, to make my skin glow with their being. But the way the boy’s mouth opens like a horizon, hearing my breath send shivers down everything, to see that the girl was right. Story makes everything taste better, especially when it is born before you. She walks to my navel and looks down through the water. She tells the boy that at the bottom of every waterhole, the heart of the forest beats. I hear him creep up behind her and he shoves her into the water. She resurfaces, laughing, cackling, before pulling him in. They do this for some time, and I can’t help but listen. They don’t notice me anymore, so I open my eyes from afar and watch them. They kick about as if they’d never felt water before. She drifts towards the edge and steadies herself but I know the boy could swim and splash about until his hair grows knotty and grey. She swims over to him and whispers something. I lean in until I can hear the coursing of my own veins beneath my navel, the pulsing language of my own heart. I hear her.

I tire of old stories, so I tell my own

My eyes widen into a sky’s expanse. My ear tumbles into the water. I let the storm tear open like cracked earth. My jaws creak open.

Baobab

The water in my navel inhales, sucking them down, quicksand to their kicks. They breathe the water and their eyes dart about like flies trying to know why they aren’t dead. He looks up to see the sky shrink, while she looks down, relaxing, knowing. How does she know?

I have never devoured storytellers in this way before, and yet she knows that my heart beats violent in the back of my throat. She tugs on his sleeve, clutching him, embracing him, their racing fears ricocheting off each other’s bodies. He finally looks down into the expanse of my maw and relaxes. They see my heart, its swollen trunk, pregnant with hunger, its arteries reaching out both ends, bark hands awaiting the children. She takes him and dives down, faster, closer to my heart. It beats faster with each kick, the water thinning so each paddle brings them nearer. They grab onto the edges of my heart, looking into its black, endless eyemouthear. She struggles to hold on, but the boy holds her steady. She climbs into the black, submitting to fate, to nature, to me. He holds her ankles so that I may not gorge on her storied-soul. Like all boys, he thinks himself stronger than he is. But I hear her whispering something. I let him keep his strength and I listen.

Spare us and I will weave your story into the blood of every newborn from this day forward

I tell her that without a songvoice to strum, she won’t ever teach another my story.

He, with the voice sewn for stories, will teach me to sing, in the way my kin would never do

I think on this, for his voice makes stories all the more delectable. I ask her how I know she means the truth.

If the next person to walk across your skin doesn’t utter your name out of respect, then I will return to your heart and feed you stories until my mind grows worms and maggots

The water swirls as I grow dizzy on the thought, on the possibility.

I agree to her bargain: if each traveller offers me a story, I promise to provide safe passage in exchange.

Oh great, endless forest! I promise you that from this day forth, kin who live past your crown and below your toes, they will forever know your name and pass it to their children as an heirloom. No stories shall be traded without your name passing the teller’s lips. We shall know the flavour of your name so that we may cook our food with it. I swear it.

I spit them out, drenched and spluttering. My fingers part my hair, for they have reached the top of my head. The boy grabs her and runs, battering my skin, tripping over my fingers, weeping. I hear him singing praise to a god I don’t know, and dream of what my name would sound like in his voice.

This piece is sponsored by CoPower, Australia’s first non-profit energy co-operative. To find out more about CoPower’s mission, services, and impact funding, jump online at https://www.cooperativepower.org.au/ or call 03 9068 6036 today.