May

Life is a jackrabbit, I thought, as I sat on the porch, staring aimlessly into the dusty horizon. My view was marred only by the dull chainlink fence that leered back at me, seeming to remind me that one couldn't get far on a pair of broken legs. The air sighed in my ears, the scratchy wool army blanket whispering against the cracked skin of my arms.
Everything moves too fast. One second I was soothing my bubbled and scabbed feet, wishing for a horse, the next, I was in a jail cell kicking myself for forgetting about the metal horseshoes. One second I was a kid in love, the next, I was sitting here, helpless.
The porch squeaked underneath me, the sun beat down, eating its way through the shadows and inching towards the jagged ends of my toenails. It was almost as if I could hear her voice still, coldly hissing the words that would seal my fate. Even though the nights here stifled and the days scorched, I was still back in the Artic.

"Dear, dear Truckle. Look at your poor face, you must be freezing tonight."
I jerked up, searching for her face. "May! May, where are you?" I howled, yanking at the frozen chains that burned hotter than any fire. "Help me!"
"Help you? Oh, dear, I'm afraid you'll need to help me first." The voice was soft as daisy petals and steely as the metal that had frozen still in my gut, echoing in the flurries of snow around me.

I'm afraid I probably should have seen it then, the stupidity I thought I had overcome in going there to meet her. A groan overcame me and I dropped my head into cracked hands. A fool. A goddamn fool.

The sleet fell faster, striking a path straight to my bones and freezing them. "What do you mean?" I gasped, struggling to see in the blur of white.
"Don't you remember, darling? There was something you were bringing me, wasn't there?"
I shook my head, trying to remember, and-- "Yes! Right! In my bag, I brought it for you!"
There was silence. Silence so deafening it blotted out the storm and captured me in a bubble of stillness.
"May? May?" I searched for her face in the blizzard, but all I could hear was my own words echoing back at me.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the bleak croaking of an old crow. May never believed me when I told her that crows croaked; only ravens cawed.

"Hi, Truckle."
I jumped back in my restraints with a half-strangled scream, and only when I regained my fragile bearings, did I realize what gave me such a fright.
May looked the way that a lioness does after a successful kill. A prideful grin wrapped her tender lips, shaping them into a snarl. Gone were the sundresses, the tenderness with which she blushed. Even her skin had gone from the dusty rose color it had always been. She stood tall, taller than she'd ever seemed, and wore a dress of black feathers. The May I had known would never have worn the skin of an animal.
She held a silver dagger in one hand, glittering like fresh ice in the morning sun. A trail of dark red garnished the sharpened edge. From the taloned fingers of her left hand swung my pack. I'd never even felt her take it.
Hesitantly, I spoke again. "May?"
She leered cruelly at me. "Yes, darling?"
"Will you help me? I'm -" I paused, uncertain. "I'm a little tied up. I rose my bound hands.
"Why?"
I blinked, shocked. She went on.
"Why should I help you? You who so blindly followed your heart instead of your head, your heart who so stupidly falls in love?"
My mouth opened in a gape, me staring at her in astonishment.
"Enjoy death row, Truckle. I won't be seeing you again."
Though the men who materialized from the shadows of the silent storm were a little less than careful with my fragile skin, I didn't feel their touch either.

That was the moment, I thought. The moment when my world shattered. I still can't believe she'd do that.
A blast of desert wind rattled against the porch, but inside, I was still cold. When I closed my eyes, it was white and not black. When I breathed, the air I gave back to the world was cold. When a tear rolled down my cheek just then, it felt like a drop of glacier water.
"Truckle!" I heard an urgent whisper, and with a start, I jerked around.
"May!?" I called, convinced it was her. This was all a tragic mistake! she'd say. It wasn't my fault, I was forced to, I didn't know what else to do!"
Instead, I was confronted by a dark, mud-smeared face. "Can you walk?" Roy asked in the same urgent tones.
Something inside me broke. It was all I could do to shake my head.
"I'll just carry you," he decided, and hauled me bodily off of the old rocking chair I had spent so much of my time in these past days. I guess I'd never see it again.
As the rhythmic thumping of Roy's gait and the whispering between the rest of the conspiracy men carried me further and further from my fate on death row, a feeling of clarity rose over me. Love: absolutely the worst choice I've made in a long, long time.